date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted

Question

I have received an interesting problem during I tried to set my Server time either with NTD or manually using date command.

First of all I have tried to use NTD. I have succesfully installed the latest version of NTD, started it. After that I have wanted the synchronization to start. This is why I have run the following command: ntpdate pool.ntp.org

And I have received the following error:

18 May 15:29:21 ntpdate[15477]: step-systime: Operation not permitted

Than I did not know what to do, so I have tried to set the time manually using the date command:

rm /etc/localtime
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT /etc/localtime
date 051822172013

However I got this error:

date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted

Can anyone guess what could be the possible problem on my server? I'm logged in as root and I'm using CentOS 5.

Thank you.

Solution 1

You can't set the time yourself in a shared-kernel, container-based VPS such as OpenVZ or Virtuozzo.

If the system time is wrong, contact the hosting provider. If the system time remains wrong, switch to another provider and consider using something other than OpenVZ.

Problems with the system time is, in fact, one of the many reasons I don't use OpenVZ based VPSes for anything anymore.

Solution 2

Is this a dedicated physical server or a VPS?

If it's a VPS, you may not have permissions to do this. Otherwise, running the date/ntpdate/hwclock commands should work as a root user.

If you are using a VPS, contact your provider to handle this for you.

Comments

[Quentin McLoad]

It is a VPS actually. Thank you for the answer. I'll contact the provider.

[Quentin McLoad]

Thank you for the detailed answer. My main problem is that I'm trying to use Amazon services and they require exact time.