System Time Being Reset On Reboot (mysteriously)

Question

I have an issue where the date/time I set with timedatectl and date -s are not preserved on reboot. I set the date using date -s, set the time using timedatectl set-time, and use hwclock --systohc. After rebooting, the hwclock still shows the time I set, but the system time reverts to the old localtime.

Looking at journalctl, I can see the bootup process starts with the time I had set (hwclock time), but partway through there is a message about the time changing: systemd[1]: Time has been changed

After this message, the timestamps all reflect the updated time.

Some notes about this system:

• The system is running RHEL 7.2
• Chrony is not installed
• The system is not connected to any network
• I have tried removing /etc/adjtime before rebooting, but the time resets anyway

I would like to understand what process/service/etc is responsible for setting the system time during bootup so I can further investigate where it is getting the time from.

Solution

I had the same issue!

What I have done to fix it?

I changed /etc/adjtime to

LOCAL

instead of UTC

After that, I rebooted my pc, entered the BIOS and set again the correct data and time.

It seems to be fine now, my systems is Debian Jessie