Time and time zone

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NoTouch OS, as any operating system, interacts with the system clock and maintains a time zone setting, e.g. for printing the current time in the task bar clock. Furthermore, some VDI products may pass the time zone setting on the server-side VDI desktop. So we suggest to properly configure the time zone and also if needed the system time.

NoTouch OS will ask for the appropriate time zone on first boot in the first time wizard, the default being US/Pacific. You can configure this value in NoTouch Center ("Administration" / "Time zone") or locally under the "Time" parameters.

While it may not be necessary to have a very exact time on thin client devices, please make sure it comes at least reasonable close otherwise HTTPS/SSL certificates can not be validated! If you don't care about the time and your systems believe they are back in the year 2012 then most likely your VDI connections will fail simply for that reason. This is especially important on the Raspberry Pi which does not have builtin, battery-powered clock. If you use NoTouch on the Raspberry Pi, using NTP is imperative.

OS-en-Time.jpg

Setting time automatically with NTP

NTP, the Network Time Protocol, allows for automatic time configuration. It will synchronize machine clocks gently and provide for maintaining a proper time at all times (no pun intended). NoTouch NTP behavior is controlled by these parameters under "Time" (in NoTouch Center "Administration"):

  • Fetch NTP time on boot. Should the system at boot time ask NTP servers for the time and set it? The default is "on".
  • Use ntp.org pool if no custom servers given. The default is "on". If you don't configure time servers, one can use publicly available time servers of the ntp.org [www.ntp.org] project. This should be ok for small numbers of machines. Large enterprises will not need ntp.org as they will probably disallow NTP traffic through firewalls anyway and maintain their own NTP servers.
  • NTP servers. A list of NTP servers (IP addresses or host names) that are to be used. If this list is empty, the parameter above controls what is to be done. By default, this is empty. In NoTouch Center, this is simply a comma-separated list.

Manually setting date and time

One can manually set date and time also. We strongly encourage you to use NTP and have everything being done automatically though.

These are the steps to manually set date and time:

  1. Open the Configuration application and log in
  2. Click on "Date and time" under "System"
  3. Enter the current date and time into the text field, exactly following the example format given
OS-en-SetDateAndTime.jpg

Other time zone settings

While NoTouch Center can of course set the clients' time zones, it does not maintain a time or time zone setting for itself, as it will simply take the setting of its host system. In case you use NComputing Virtual Appliance, you can configure the virtual appliance time zone in the VA's admin console, under VA Configuration.