How To Set Date And Time

The Homebridge Raspberry Pi Image automatically sets time using an NTP server using systemd-timesyncd.

Problems Caused By Not Having Correct Date / Time

Not having the correct date and time on your device can cause many issues:

Inability to install or update plugins as the remote server SSL certificate can't be verified.
Plugins may not to be able to talk to remote servers as SSL certificate can't be verified.
Logs will show incorrect timestamp.

The date / time not automatically being set may be a symptom of a bigger issue:

No internet access. The Homebridge Raspberry Pi Image requires access to the internet to get the correct time from the NTP server.
Cannot resolve DNS. Make sure your device is being assigned valid DNS servers:
- Try running ping 0.debian.pool.ntp.org and make sure you get a response.
- Check your current DNS server by running cat /etc/resolv.conf
- If you have an Eero router, the security settings may be blocking DNS requests see How To Fix Eero Router Internet and DNS Connectivity Issues for more information.
- If you need to manually configure the DNS server settings run sudo nmtui and edit your network connection
Network Firewall Blocking Traffic. Make sure your network is configured to allow connections to the Debian NTP servers:
- 0.debian.pool.ntp.org
- 1.debian.pool.ntp.org
- 2.debian.pool.ntp.org
- 3.debian.pool.ntp.org
Check systemd-timesyncd logs. Run sudo journalctl -u systemd-timesyncd and look for any errors.

You can restart the systemd-timesyncd to trigger a date/time sync:

sudo systemctl restart  systemd-timesyncd

If you need to use a different NTP server, you can set them in the /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf file.