DATE(1)DATE(1)NAME
date - print and set the date
SYNOPSIS
date [ -n ] [ -u ] [ yymmddhhmm[.ss] ]
DESCRIPTION
If no arguments are given, the current date and time are printed.
Providing an argument will set the desired date. Only the superuser
can set the date.
The -u flag is used to display or set the date in GMT (universal) time.
yy represents the last two digits of the year; the first mm is the
month number; dd is the day number; hh is the hour number (24 hour
system); the second mm is the minute number; .ss is optional and
represents the seconds. For example:
date 8506131627
sets the date to June 13 1985, 4:27 PM. The year, month and day may be
omitted; the default values will be the current ones. The system
operates in GMT. Date takes care of the conversion to and from local
standard and daylight-saving time.
If a network time system is being used to synchronize the clocks of
machines on the network, the network time will eventually override the
time set locally by date. The recommended network time synchronization
daemon is ntpd(8). (However, if instead the old daemon timed(8) is
running, date sets the time globally on all the network's machines
unless the -n option is given.)
SEE ALSOgettimeofday(2), ntpd(8)DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is 0 on success and 1 on failure to set the date. (An exit
status of 2 means that timed(8) is running and the local date was set
successfully, but not the global date.)
If you try to set the date but are not the super-user, an error message
is printed, along with the current (unchanged) date and time.
NeXT, Inc. July 22, 1993 DATE(1)