# cron daemon date/time +4 hours ahead of system date/time on RPI4?



## JonnySac (Jun 6, 2021)

Hi,
I've been using FreeBSD 13.0 on an RPI 4 and I noticed something weird when setting up a cron job.  I could not get the cron job to run, so I inspected /var/log/cron and found 2 different datetimes. As you can see below, it logs when I edit the crontab using the correct datetime of the system (the same as what `date` outputs), then you can also see log entries from `/usr/sbin/cron` that are +4 hours ahead of the system datetime. So after seeing that, I added 4 hours to my cron job and it ran as expected.  I am using NTP for time since the RPI has no hardware clock, and the timezone is set correctly as EST.

Why would the cron daemon be running +4 hours ahead of the system time?  Thanks!


```
Jun  6 06:57:00 rpi4-bsd /usr/sbin/cron[11602]: (root) CMD (/root/mtree-specs/mtree-spec-cron-job.sh)
Jun  6 02:57:43 rpi4-bsd crontab[11607]: (root) BEGIN EDIT (root)
Jun  6 02:59:50 rpi4-bsd crontab[11607]: (root) REPLACE (root)
Jun  6 02:59:51 rpi4-bsd crontab[11607]: (root) END EDIT (root)
Jun  6 07:00:00 rpi4-bsd /usr/sbin/cron[1316]: (root) RELOAD (tabs/root)
Jun  6 07:00:00 rpi4-bsd /usr/sbin/cron[11612]: (root) CMD (newsyslog)
Jun  6 07:00:00 rpi4-bsd /usr/sbin/cron[11613]: (operator) CMD (/usr/libexec/save-entropy)
Jun  6 07:00:00 rpi4-bsd /usr/sbin/cron[11614]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
Jun  6 07:05:00 rpi4-bsd /usr/sbin/cron[11627]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
```


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## cmoerz (Jun 6, 2021)

I suppose, you did check whether your /etc/contab contains any environment variables that might cause this? If I remember correctly, one can change timezone settings for Vixie cron via the `TZ` environment variable.

Adding something like

```
TZ=America/New York
```
should do the trick of fixing your symptom. Then again this might still not fix the actual underlying issue that's causing your situation. Can't say without seeing what's in your /etc/crontab or in the related files in /etc/crontab.d/.


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## JonnySac (Jun 6, 2021)

My /etc/crontab is untouched default 13.0, and I have nothing in /etc/crontab.d/. The cron job I added was with `crontab -e`.  I ended up restarting the cron service `service cron restart` and it seemed to fix the time. I'll see what happens next time I reboot. Thanks.


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## Vull (Jun 7, 2021)

When I run the FreeBSD installer, there's a question I must answer as to whether or not my computer's clock is set to UTC time, or Greenwich Mean Time. UTC time is exactly 4 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Savings Time, i.e., EDT, or New York time.

I've never had an RPI and am not clear on what the distinction is between a real-time clock and a hardware clock, but all electronic computers require some kind of a hardware clock in order to function.  Microsoft Windows expects your hardware clock to be set to local time, whereas Unix derivatives like FreeBSD expect it to be set to UTC.


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