A quick snippet for syncing your date and time via NTP. I have noticed that Windows and Linux do not follow the same convention by standard, and are always an hour out from each other, even though both claim to follow the same time zone. So, what I am having to do is sync via NTP each time I dual boot.

In Linux, this can be done using cron jobs or using the NTP daemon, but that does not do it frequently enough for my liking. So here is a bash snippet for it:

sudo service ntp stop sudo ntpdate 0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com sudo service ntp start

The first line stops the NTP daemon, since the ntpdate command does not like it when it is running (port in use). The second command uses a server in the selected list to sync with. The final line restarts the NTP daemon.

The Windows (Windows 7) equivalent is very similar. Like with linux, it has an in-built sync facility, but it again does not sync often enough for my liking. Like with the bash script, the commands must be run with elevated rights, so you must “Run as Administrator”, or run from an elevated rights command prompt, which you do as follows:

1. Click Start, type "cmd" into the command window (do NOT use Windows+R)
2. Hold down CTRL+SHIFT, then press ENTER
3. You will be prompted (if you have UAC active), OK it and you will get a command prompt with "Administrator" in the title.

net stop “Windows Time” net start “Windows Time” w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:“0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com” /syncfromflags:ALL /update w32tm /resync

This code starts/restarts the Windows Time service then configures it with a pool of NTP servers, before asking the service to update itself and then resync. The resync action is what adjusts the time.

I’m one of those people who hates having to shutdown machines, then restart them, and start logging into all my sites all over again, so I’m particularly thankful for hibernation functionality.

On Ubuntu (possibly Debian as well, but I haven’t checked), you can install either (or both) of the hibernate package, or the TuxOnIce-enabled kernel.

Hibernate is a script that detects whether or not you have a TOI-enabled kernel, and if you have such a kernel, it will use the TOI routines.

Hibernate worked perfectly for me, until I started using BOINC. Then, hibernation would hang with my laptop in a “limbo” state. Neither fully on, nor fully powered off. Turns out that BOINC must be either hogging the memory, or not releasing it properly. So, instead of doing

sudo hibernate

I do this

sudo service boinc-client stop sudo hibernate -k sudo service boinc-client start

So I stop the BOINC service (freeing up memory and CPU cycles), then I do the hibernate (allowing it to kill processes if needed), and then I startup the BOINC service again. The last line only gets executed upon resuming.