# fake-hwclock

## description

Many simple systems, such as the Raspberry PI, don't have hardware clocks.
When they boot, they start with their system clock set at some fixed date, e.g. 2000/01/01 00:00:00.

A fake-hwclock sets the initial time to some known value from before the last reboot.  This brings
the clock into a _sensible_ range prior to getting a better value from network based services
such as _ntp_.  Should the network not be available, services can continue to run from where they
left off, avoiding problems with an internal clock set far in the past conflicting with recent
timestamps.

Some systems have packages for this available, while others don't.  This repository consists of
shell scripts and service files for _systemd_ based systems to achieve this, and has been
tested on a Raspberry Pi 3 running CentOS 7

## features

Sets the time to a "recent" timestamp early in the boot to avoid timestamps
far in the past when booting, prior to getting a proper timestamp from the network.

- Restores the system clock from file during early boot
- Saves the clock into a file at shutdown
- Regularly saves the current time into the data file, in case of improper shutdown.
- shell based to avoid platform and binary dependencies.
- contains fake_hwclock.service and fake-hwclock.timer systemd units.

## installation:

1. copy these files into an empty folder.
2. install the services:
```cd myfolder; ./install```
This will install it into `/opt/fake-hwclock`, and the unit files into `/etc/systemd/system`.
3. The install script has enabled and started the service, but you can also do it manually:
```systemctl enable fake-hwclock.service && systemctl start fake-hwclock.service```