Wrong time in LUKS unlock screen fedora-atomic

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1

Hi,

I noticed when I run sudo journalctl -b that the time when I booted my PC is wrong.
This is only the case in the pre-boot authentication environment (initramfs?) or whatever you call it. So the environment where you just type in your luks encryption password for your root filesystem.

For example when it is actually 15:00 (13:00 UTC) it shows as 17:00 in the initramfs.
I’m from Germany.

I thought this was caused by the /etc/localtime file of my host not being present in the initramfs. But that doesn’t make any sense anyway because it should display the UTC time following this logic.

Because I couldn’t find anything related to fedora silverblue and initramfs time issues I tried this:
sudo rpm-ostree initramfs-etc --track=/etc/localtime and a reboot later and nothing changed.

where I got the idea:

I do not dual boot Windows or another OS.

Could this be related to the problem?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_time#UTC_in_Microsoft_Windows

It is not a big deal and doesn’t cause any problems I am just confused.

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2

Before we start guessing, it would be useful to get some facts.

  1. Run timedatectl and show the results.
  2. What time does the the BIOS show before booting and what is your wall clock time?
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4

because my reply was flagged for spam apparently

Local time: Do 2024-08-29 18:38:37 CEST
Universal time: Do 2024-08-29 16:38:37 UTC
RTC time: Do 2024-08-29 18:38:36
Time zone: Europe/Berlin (CEST, +0200)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: yes

Warning: The system is configured to read the RTC time in the local time zone.
This mode cannot be fully supported. It will create various problems
with time zone changes and daylight saving time adjustments. The RTC
time is never updated, it relies on external facilities to maintain it.
If at all possible, use RTC in UTC by calling
‘timedatectl set-local-rtc 0’.

the time in my bios is my wall time

on my framework laptop also silverblue (time is correct)
RTC in local TZ: no

5

Then I suggest you set ‘timedatectl set-local-rtc 0’ and set the BIOS time to wall clock time minus two. that is at 15:00 set the BIOS clock to 13:00. Just like your other system.

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6

the explanation:

Windows changes the BIOS clock time to the correct timezone

Linux Distros on the other hand keep that time at the previous config (UTC in your case maybe?) and add the difference manually.

this process can be controlled with timedatectl

the initramfs doesnt seem to use this service and instead rely on the BIOS time. likely because it is not available yet

7

The service would very likely not be available to use at that stage of the boot process.

8

TLDR; a timedatectl set-local-rtc 0 and 2 reboots fixed it

When I ran timedatectl set-local-rtc 0

and rebooted into bios with

systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

The time in the bios was set to my wall clock time and was still wrong in journalctl
and another reboot later the bios now shows the UTC time and journalctl shows the correct time.

I didn’t change anything in the BIOS in fact I was just updating it and it nukes all the settings anyway.

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