Can't find timesync.service

Technical Support
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Time Sync Issue Troubleshooting

Since systemd-timesyncd.service is running but your date is stuck at January 20th instead of February 9th, there are several potential issues to investigate.

Check RTC Status

Your Verdin iMX8M Plus has multiple RTCs available (1). Check the current RTC status:

timedatectl

(1)

This will show you both the system clock and RTC time. If you see something like this output, it indicates an RTC synchronization issue (1):

# timedatectl   
      Local time: Mon 2014-05-26 11:29:40 UTC  
  Universal time: Mon 2014-05-26 11:29:40 UTC  
        RTC time: Mon 2014-05-26 11:29:39  
        Timezone: Universal (UTC, +0000)  
     NTP enabled: n/a

(1)

Manual Time Setting

If the automatic NTP sync isn’t working, you can manually set the time (1):

timedatectl set-ntp false  
timedatectl set-time "2025-02-09 12:00:00"

(1)

When using timedatectl, the time gets stored into the hardware clock immediately when setting a new date or time (1).

Check Network Connectivity

The systemd-timesyncd service requires internet connectivity to synchronize with NTP servers (2). Verify your network connection and ensure the device can reach external NTP servers.

Potential systemd Issue

There’s a known issue with timedatectl failing when the RTC has invalid time, which affects systemd versions before 254.9 (3). Since you’re running Torizon OS 7.3.0, this should include systemd version 255.13 which has the fix (3), but if the RTC time was corrupted before the fix was applied, you might need to manually reset it.

Alternative RTC Commands

You can also use the hwclock command to directly manipulate the hardware clock (1):

hwclock -r

(1)

To set the hardware clock from system time:

hwclock -w

(1)

To set system time from hardware clock:

hwclock -s

(1)

Check Available RTCs

Your Verdin iMX8M Plus has two RTCs available (1):

  • An internal low power RX8130CE real-time clock from Epson (rtc0)
  • The i.MX 8M Plus SoC internal RTC (rtc1)

Check which RTCs are available:

ls /dev/rtc*

Try setting the time manually first, then re-enable NTP synchronization to see if it resolves the issue.

Best regards, Toradex AI Assistant.

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