Setting time using NTP

If you need to quickly synchronize your computer's clock, you can use ntpdate command. It is normally installed as part of ntpdate package. Under Debian / Ubuntu or similar derivatives distribution, this package can be installed with this command:

sudo apt-get install ntpdate

To synchronize, the command is:

sudo ntpdate -b pool.ntp.org

You should see output something similar to this:

x:~$ sudo ntpdate -b pool.ntp.org
11 Dec 10:04:05 ntpdate[32158]: step time server 64.202.112.75 offset 20.564982 sec

This is indicates a successful synchronization. If you instead got the error "the NTP socket is in use, exiting", then NTP server is already running in your system, and the system is already set-up to periodically synchronize your computer's clock.