<h2>Intro</h2>
<p>Keeping system time in sync is important for logs, 2FA, and various time-sensitive applications. In this post I will walk through the exact commands I use to enable NTP synchronization on a Debian system.</p>
<h2>Prerequisites</h2>
<ul>
<li>A Debian-based system</li>
<li>Root or sudo privileges</li>
</ul>
<h2>Install and enable systemd-timesyncd</h2>
<p>Install the systemd-timesyncd package, which provides NTP synchronization functionality:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">apt install systemd-timesyncd
</code></pre>
<p>Enable the service to run at boot and start it immediately:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">systemctl enable systemd-timesyncd.service --now
</code></pre>
<h2>Enable NTP at the system level</h2>
<p>Tell systemd/timedatectl to use network time synchronization:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">timedatectl set-ntp true
</code></pre>
<h2>Verify synchronization</h2>
<p>You can verify if NTP is active with:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">timedatectl status
</code></pre>
<p>Look for these lines:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>NTP service: active</code></li>
<li><code>System clock synchronized: yes</code></li>
</ul>
<p>If those values are not active yet, wait a minute and run the status command again.</p>
<h3>Problems?</h3>
<p>If synchronization does not start, first check the service status and logs:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">systemctl status systemd-timesyncd.service
journalctl -u systemd-timesyncd.service
</code></pre>
<p>Also verify the system has outbound network access to NTP servers (UDP port 123).</p>


Setting up NTP sync on Debian with systemd-timesyncd

Intro

Prerequisites

Install and enable systemd-timesyncd

Enable NTP at the system level

Verify synchronization

Problems?