If using the Centos 6 minimal installation you may want to find a way of syncronising your local system clock if you are not using the bells and whistles of a full desktop environment.
You can do this using OpenNTPD which is a free implementation of the
Network Time Protocol.
It provides the ability to sync the local clock to remote NTP servers
and can act as NTP server, redistributing the local clock.
Installing is just a matter of downloading the tar.gz, building it and setting up a few configuration files.
Intall wget if not already there and as always when compiling source files make sure you have set up kernels and build tools.
$ sudo yum -y install wget
$ cd /tmp
$ wget ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/OpenNTPD/openntpd-3.9p1.tar.gz
$ tar xvf openntpd-3.9p1.tar.gz
$ cd openntpd-3.9p1
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
Set up the config files
$ sudo groupadd _ntp
$ sudo useradd -g _ntp -s /sbin/nologin -d /var/empty -c 'OpenNTP daemon' _ntp
Install startup script
$ sudo cp contrib/redhat/ntpd /etc/init.d/openntpd
$ sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/openntpd
Edit the scripts
# vi /etc/init.d/openntpd
add the following before prog="ntpd"
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:$PATH
Close, save and then edit ntpd.conf
# vi /usr/local/etc/ntpd.conf
Edit /usr/local/etc/ntpd.conf
Listen localhost and the main IP then sync to ntp server
listen on 127.0.0.1
listen on 192.168.0.100
Then further down the file
servers pool.ntp.org
Close and save
Start OpenNTPD
$ sudo service openntpd start
$ sudo service openntpd stop
$ sudo service openntpd restart
Start on reboot
# chkconfig openntpd on
Check ntpd is running
$ sudo service openntpd status
$ sudo netstat -tulpn
$ sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :123
And you can also use the ntpstat command as follows
$ ntpstat
synchronised to NTP server (85.31.186.170) at stratum 3
time correct to within 58 ms
polling server every 256 s
You can now run the clock on the command line and obtain the correct time.
$ sudo /sbin/clock
Mon 08 Jul 2013 07:42:23 AM BST -0.828329 seconds
Labels: Centos 6, local clock sync, OpenNTPD, RHEL