File:  [CSRG BSD Unix] / 43BSDTahoe / man / man1 / date.1
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BSD 4.3tahoe

.\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.  The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\"
.\"	@(#)date.1	6.6 (Berkeley) 4/1/87
.\"
.TH DATE 1 "April 1, 1987"
.UC 4
.SH NAME
date \- print and set the date
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B date
.RB "[-nu] [-d dst] [-t minutes_west] [yymmddhhmm [" . "ss] ]"
.SH 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 \fI-d\fP and \fI-t\fP
flags set the kernel's values for daylight savings time and
minutes west of GMT.  If \fIdst\fP is non-zero, future calls
to \fIgettimeofday\fP(2) will return a non-zero \fItz_dsttime\fP.
\fIMinutes_west\fP provides the number of minutes returned
by future calls to \fIgettimeofday\fP(2) in \fItz_minuteswest\fP.  The
\fI-u\fP flag is used to display or set the date in GMT (universal) time.
.I yy
represents the last two digits of the year;
the first
.I mm
is the month number;
.I dd
is the day number;
.I hh
is the hour number (24 hour system);
the second
.I mm
is the minute number;
.BI . ss
is optional and represents the seconds.
For example:
.IP
date 8506131627
.PP
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.  \fIDate\fP takes care of the conversion to and from
local standard and daylight-saving time.
.PP
If 
.I timed(8)
is running to synchronize the clocks of machines in a local
area network, \fIdate\fP sets the time globally on all those
machines unless the
.B \-n
option is given.
.SH FILES
/usr/adm/wtmp to record time-setting.
In /usr/adm/messages, \fIdate\fP records the name of the user
setting the time.
.SH SEE ALSO
gettimeofday(2), utmp(5), timed(8),
.br
\fITSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD\fP, 
R. Gusella and S. Zatti
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is 0 on success, 1 on complete failure to set the date,
and 2 on successfully setting the local date but failing globally.
.PP
Occasionally, when \fItimed\fP synchronizes the time on many hosts, 
the setting of a new time value may require more than a few seconds.
On these occasions, \fIdate\fP prints: `Network time being set'.
The message `Communication error with timed' occurs when the communication
between \fIdate\fP and \fItimed\fP fails.
.SH BUGS
The system attempts to keep the date in a format closely compatible
with VMS.  VMS, however, uses local time (rather than GMT) and does
not understand daylight-saving time.  Thus, if you use both UNIX
and VMS, VMS will be running on GMT.

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