WSL2 Clock is out of sync with Windows

Question

WSL2 clock goes out of sync after resuming from sleep/hibernate.

A workaround was shared on GitHub sudo hwclock -s to resync clock in WSL, but you have to do this every time you resume from sleep/hibernate.

Answer 1

In case anyone finds this via search and doesn't notice that there is actually a solution listed in the question, you can fix WSL clock drift via.

sudo hwclock -s

If you just need to do it occasionally, this is a fine solution. If you need to do it more frequently, consider @piouson's solution

Answer 2

Update

The fix is now in WSL2 Linux kernel 5.10.16.3 and newer! Note you may need to install WSL2 from the Windows Store to get the latest kernel version per this thread with Craig from Microsoft.

Older Answer

sudo hwclock -s gets you kind of there, but for some reason doesn't get the exact time - I often find it's a minute or so in the future!

sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org should get you the correct time.

But this is all because of a bug in the Linux kernel which should be included in a Windows update at some point...

There are a number of hacks referenced in the the GitHub issue which can work around this, mostly, but not always, in my experience...

Answer 3

Just restart wsl, it works fine for me

wsl --shutdown

then

wsl

in PowerShell

Answer 4

UPDATE: as mentioned by drkvogel, the Clock Sync fix was released in WSL2 kernel version 5.10.16.3, however, you should install the Windows Store version of WSL:

# powershell install by id
winget install 9P9TQF7MRM4R

# powershell install by name
winget install 'Windows Subsystem for Linux'

---

At time of writing, this GitHub Issue was open for the bug.

The workaround I chose for my situation (single distro in WSL2) is to use Windows Task Scheduler to run hwclock in WSL whenever Windows resyncs hardware clock.

Windows: Open PowerShell as Administrator

schtasks /create /tn WSLClockSync /tr "wsl.exe sudo hwclock -s" /sc onevent /ec system /mo "*[System[Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General'] and (EventID=1)]]"
Set-ScheduledTask WSLClockSync -Settings (New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet -AllowStartIfOnBatteries)

WSL2: Run sudo visudo and add hwclock to sudoers to skip password prompt

# bottom of my file looks like this
...
...
#includedir /etc/sudoers.d
<username> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/hwclock, /usr/bin/apt update, /usr/bin/apt upgrade

Results

See image for how to get Event XPath from Windows Event filtering. Use as provided to let task scheduler auto-display scheduled triggers.

Answer 5

Necro'ing this: As of May 2022, this issue persists to a degree.

There are two components.

First, Windows time sync needs to be decent to start with. It's not, out of the box, on machines that aren't domain-joined.

• Change w32time to start automatically. In Administrator cmd, but not PowerShell, sc triggerinfo w32time start/networkon stop/networkoff. Verify with sc qtriggerinfo w32time. To get into cmd that way, you can start Admin PowerShell and then just type cmd.

• Make a few changes in regedit.

  • In Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\Config, set MaxPollInterval to hex c, decimal 12.
  • Check Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\Parameters\NtpServer. If it ends in 0x9 you are done. If it ends in 0x1 you need to adjust SpecialPollInterval in Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\TimeProviders\NtpClient to read 3600

• Reboot, then from Powershell run w32tm /query /status /verbose to verify that w32time service did start. If it didn't, check triggers again. If all else fails, set it to Automatic Delayed startup

Second, WSL2 needs to actually stay in sync. MS will likely release another kernel fix. In the meantime a scheduled task can bring it back into sync periodically: schtasks /Create /TN WSL2TimeSync /TR "wsl -u root hwclock -s" /SC ONEVENT /EC System /MO "*[System[Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power'] and (EventID=107 or EventID=507) or Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General'] and (EventID=1)]]" /F

Answer 6

Use cron to schedule sudo hwclock -s

As others said before sudo hwclock -s syncs the clock,
but you will need to do this after every sleep/hibernate. Solution is to add an hourly cron task to sync the clock.

Open crontab with sudo (must open with sudo since the command uses sudo):

sudo crontab -e 

and add this code with a new line after the task (it's a cron requirement):

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
@hourly hwclock -s

You must either set PATH since root-cron do not has it or use absolute paths e.g. /usr/sbin/hwclock.

cron troubleshooting:

• To verify cron is working you may add a dummy task (don't forget to add a new line):
  * * * * * date > /tmp/log.txt
• If no file is created, verify cron is working: pgrep cron.
  If no PID shows, start cron with: sudo service cron start.
• To learn cron timing method: cron timing generator

Answer 7

This GitHub Issue was closed

You can also run the below command in Powershell Terminal so sync it.

wsl.exe sudo hwclock -s

Answer 8

You can manually update the WSL2 kernel to 5.10.16 by following the method in this comment: #5650 (comment). I have fixed the issue by this method.

Answer 9

I've added this to Windows Task Scheduler, set to run every 12 hours:

wsl.exe -d ubuntu -u root -- ntpdate time.windows.com

To install ntpdate:

sudo apt install ntpdate

Answer 10

If that issue still happened on a version higher than 5.10.16.3 (as it was for my version 5.15.90.1) you could fix it by systemd service

Thirst, make sure that you have systemd enabled, /etc/wsl.conf has:

[boot]
systemd=true

Then install systemd-timesyncd:

sudo apt install systemd-timesyncd

Edit timesyncd config:

sudo systemctl edit systemd-timesyncd

with(to make it run inside virtualized environment):

[Unit]
ConditionVirtualization=

And start it:

sudo systemctl start systemd-timesyncd

Thanks for the solution from the github issue

Answer 11

I started having this issue about 6-9 months ago. Restarting wsl always works, but that is not ideal for obvious reasons. hwclock -s running through a cron job at regular intervals worked for a few months, but not anymore. @igor-alex's approach is working for me, but it required some different steps:

/etc/wsl.conf (same as above)

[boot]
systemd=true

Install systemd-timesync (same as above)

sudo apt install systemd-timesyncd

The suggested edits for timesyncd did NOT work for me and resulted in failure to start the service. Instead I did the following:

sudo systemctl edit systemd-timesyncd.service

[Unit]
ConditionVirtualization=
ConditionVirtualization=wsl

Courtesy of https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/737366/547670

And start it (same as above)

sudo systemctl start systemd-timesyncd

HTH

Answer 12

For me this issue seems to be happening when the system goes to sleep. So I have registered a bash command to call whenever, it goes out of sync. I did it by adding a function.sh file and sourced it in ~/.bashrc.

function.sh:

YELLOW='\033[0;33m'
NC='\033[0m'

TIME_SERVER=ntp.ubuntu.com

# Sync wsl time
sync_date () {
    echo -e "${RED}sudo ntpdate $TIME_SERVER ${NC}"
    echo
    sudo ntpdate $TIME_SERVER
}

~/.bashrc:

source ~/Linux/funtions.sh

Note that I have added a bit of color and some customizations (TIME_SERVER: [windows time server is other option]).

You can sync the time using sync_date command in cli.

Answer 13

The problem persisted for me and hwclock/ntpd weren't quite working for my use case so I wrote a little daemon to work around the problem:

https://github.com/matthewnourse/polite-hwclock-hctosys

...I hope you find it helpful.

Answer 14

If you want to go the route of adding something to the end of your ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile, but find it annoying to have to type in your su password all the time, you can create a timed prompt to only run the update when you want. Here I have achieved this by put a wrapper around Haribk's function:

YELLOW='\033[0;33m'
NC='\033[0m'
TIME_SERVER=ntp.ubuntu.com

# Sync wsl time
sync_date () {
    # Uncomment one of the options below.
    cmd="ntpdate $TIME_SERVER"
    #cmd=hwclock -sv
    echo -e "${YELLOW}sudo ${cmd}${NC}"
    echo
    sudo $cmd
}

date
t=10
resp=
while [[ $t != 0 ]]
do
  t=$(( $t - 1 ))
  read -t1 -ep"($t) Sync clock with host? [yN] " -n1 resp
  if [[ $? == 0  && $resp == '' || ${resp,,} == 'n' ]]
  then
    break
  fi
  if [[ ${resp,,} == 'y' ]]
  then
    sync_date
    break
  fi
done
if [[ $resp == '' ]]; then echo; fi

This gives a “y/n” prompt that counts down from 9, and assumes “n” if nothing is entered in that time or the Enter key is pressed.

Answer 15

On arch linux the "sudo hwclock -s" has stopped working for me (anyone know why?)

The fix "sudo ntpdate time.windows.com" does work for me

Answer 16

This worked for me on Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS.

Install ntpdate

sudo apt install ntpdate

Add this line to ~/.profile

sudo ntpdate time.windows.com

Now everytime you open a new session, the date and time get synced. Also if you want to sync for an existing session, run the command :

sudo ntpdate time.windows.com