Timedate Daemon

TimeDate Daemon is a system service that can be used to control the system time and related settings.

This is the replacement of systemd service that control the org.freedesktop.timedate1 D-Bus interface for GNU Linux distributions which does not have a systemd.

You can find specification at: Freedesktop.org

TimeDate Daemon supports interactive parameter which can be used to control whether PolKit should interactively ask the user for authentication credentials if required. But also, if interactive way is not applicable, users permissions can be set by PolKit rules in the /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d/org.freedesktop.timedate1.rules file. For example, a system administrator can add Desktop-users into wheel group to give them rights to access the org.freedesktop.timedate1 D-Bus interface.

Requirements:

Package		min Version
glib-2.0	>=	2.76
gobject-2.0	>=	2.76
gio-2.0	>=	2.76
polkit-gobject-1	>=	123
libpcre2-8	>=	10.36
dbus	>=	1.13.18

How to Build:

 meson setup --prefix=/usr . ..
 ninja
 ninja install

Supported Distributions:

• Radix cross Linux
• Slackware (needed litle changes in timeconfig script)
  Update: Slackware-current works fine now

For other systems the special implementation of NTP daemon control should be developed.

TODO:

- timedatectl (simply it can be writen in Bash).
Update: Done!

loginctl --version
elogind 257 (257.14)

timedatectl status
               Local time: Mon Jun  1 00:10:31 EEST 2026
           Universal time: Sun May 31 21:10:32 UTC 2026
                 RTC time: 2026-06-01 00:10:31.952579+03:00
                Time zone: Europe/Athens
              NTP enabled: yes
         NTP synchronized: yes
          RTC in local TZ: yes
               CanNTP: yes

timedatectl show
Timezone=Europe/Athens
LocalRTC=true
CanNTP=true
NTP=true
NTPSynchronized=true
TimeUSec=1780261839000000
RTCTimeUSec=2026-06-01T00:10:39.117263+03:00

timedatectl list-timezones | grep Europe
Europe/Amsterdam
Europe/Andorra
Europe/Astrakhan
Europe/Athens
Europe/Belfast
Europe/Belgrade
Europe/Berlin
Europe/Bratislava
Europe/Brussels
Europe/Bucharest
Europe/Budapest
Europe/Busingen
Europe/Chisinau
Europe/Copenhagen
Europe/Dublin
Europe/Gibraltar
Europe/Guernsey
Europe/Helsinki
Europe/Isle_of_Man
Europe/Istanbul
Europe/Jersey
Europe/Kaliningrad
Europe/Kiev
Europe/Kirov
Europe/Kyiv
Europe/Lisbon
Europe/Ljubljana
Europe/London
Europe/Luxembourg
Europe/Madrid
Europe/Malta
Europe/Mariehamn
Europe/Minsk
Europe/Monaco
Europe/Moscow
Europe/Nicosia
Europe/Oslo
Europe/Paris
Europe/Podgorica
Europe/Prague
Europe/Riga
Europe/Rome
Europe/Samara
Europe/San_Marino
Europe/Sarajevo
Europe/Saratov
Europe/Simferopol
Europe/Skopje
Europe/Sofia
Europe/Stockholm
Europe/Tallinn
Europe/Tirane
Europe/Tiraspol
Europe/Ulyanovsk
Europe/Uzhgorod
Europe/Vaduz
Europe/Vatican
Europe/Vienna
Europe/Vilnius
Europe/Volgograd
Europe/Warsaw
Europe/Zagreb
Europe/Zaporozhye
Europe/Zurich

busctl get-property org.freedesktop.timedate1 /org/freedesktop/timedate1 org.freedesktop.timedate1 Timezone
s "Europe/Athens"

timedatectl --help
Usage: timedatectl [OPTIONS] COMMAND

Commands:
  status                   Show current time settings
  show                     Show settings in key=value format
  set-timezone ZONE        Set the system timezone (e.g. Europe/Athens)
  set-local-rtc [0|1]      Control whether RTC is in local time
  set-ntp [0|1]            Enable or disable NTP synchronization
  set-time TIME            Set time manually (e.g. '2026-05-31 20:30:00')
  list-timezones           List available timezones
  sync-now                 Force immediate NTP time sync

Options:
  -h, --help               Show this help

LICENSE:

GNU General Public License Version 2, June 1991