Time Synchronization on Ubuntu using NTP

Modern computers do have internal clocks called Real Time Clock chips (RTC) that provide time and date information. These chips are battery backed so that even during power outages, they can maintain time but personal computers are not designed to be perfect clocks. Their design has been optimized for mass production and low-cost rather than maintaining accurate time.

For many applications, this is can be quite adequate, although, quite often machines need time to be synchronised with other PC's on a network and when computers are out of sync with each other problems can arise such as sharing network files or in some environments even fraud!

NTP can maintain time over the public Internet to within 10 milliseconds (1/100th of a second) and can perform even better over LANs with accuracies of 200 microseconds (1/5000th of a second) under ideal conditions.

Keeping Linux systems synchronized is highly important for many reasons such as:

    * Security
    * Conducting time sensitive transactions
    * Tracing and logging errors
    * Preventing data loss
    * Auditing systems

To set up NTP time synchronization graphically, launch Time & Date, also available through (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Time & Date). Click the keys to unlock settings. Now, you can select your time zone, and configure it to "Keep synchronized with Internet servers", at which point it will prompt you to Install NTP support.

After that, click "Select Servers" and check off the server closest to you.