Email timestamps 4.5 hours off

blaszlo

blaszlo

Verified User
Joined
Jun 9, 2008
Messages
116
Hey guys,

Small problem... The timestamp on incoming emails from one of my servers is about 4 and a half hours off... Any ideas on why or how I can correct this? Is it in the server itself, or maybe the computer he's checking it on? Any help is appreciated, I got a pretty pissed off customer right now. Thanks!
 
That's a pretty lame thing to be pissed off about. Its not the mail was delayed 4.5 hours.

Anyway .... Is off with all emails from all senders?

Have you checked the hardware time, the software time, and the time zone on the server?
 
Brad,

First, which timestamp? The date field, or some timestap in the headers? If the headers, forget about it; you have no control over what servers add to headers during the time the email traverses the 'net.

If it's off on the date field that could be caused because he's got the wrong timezone (not the wrong time) on his local system.

You should run the date command from your shell to make sure your time and timezone aren't off.

Jeff
 
Ok, let me be a but more specific... There are now quite a few customers that have called me about this... Apparently, the timestamp on the email being recived is off by 4.5 hours, but the date is correct (not too sure if it's in the headers or not).
 
Ok thanks guys, i just set the correct time with the date command and that fixed it
 
Its always good to read the previous posts before replying. :)
 
I highly recommend running rdate command in cron at least every week to avoid this things.
 
I run
Code: 
rdate -s time-b.nist.gov > /dev/null
hwclock --systohc > /dev/null
as a cronjob, hourly. It doesn't need to run that often.

I use time-b.nist.gov rather than time-a.nist.gov because it's my experience that most people use the first server in a list; I'm doing my part to spread the load :).

Jeff
 
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