[Discuss] adventures in dns

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Gillen
> 
> I messed around with 'date -s' trying to set the system clock, but gave up
> figuring out how to specify the format correctly (I have used it in the

When you "man date" it looks pretty straightforward to me: 
/usr/bin/date [-u] [ [mmdd] HHMM |  mmddHHMM [cc] yy]  [.SS]
Just start typing numbers, in that order
	date 103007322012
(It's 10/30 07:32, 2012 right now.)

Also, this has been my standard NTP server for a few years.  If anyone gets it right, it's got to be them.
	north-america.pool.ntp.org
I would find it *extremely* shocking if they screwed up their DNS in such a way that it wouldn't resolve if you had the wrong date on your computer.  That's the POINT of their DNS.

Even if your date is wrong, you can always ask someone else to look it up for you explicitly
	nslookup north-america.pool.ntp.org 8.8.8.8
This way, you're completely bypassing your local resolver and going directly to 8.8.8.8 to ask them to resolve it

And finally, for a one-time-bam set your clock, just run the ntpdate command.
	ntpdate north-america.pool.ntp.org
(This one does rely on your local resolver, so you might have to do the nslookup command first, and then type in the IP address.)