If you haven’t read part 1 yet, make sure you start there.

I had a great idea after posting part 3 last night… why not try to set the interface as static so DHCP isn’t impacted? That way, I won’t have to re-flash to an earlier image. So I stuck the SD card into my SD reader and low and behold, /etc/network/interfaces is accessible! So I commented out the DHCP line and set it instead to the static IP I have reserved for it, and low and behold, I’m up and running.

root@nems:/usr/local/share/nems/nems-scripts# cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp
    iface eth0 inet static
        address 10.0.0.155
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        gateway 10.0.0.1

And to boot, get this:

nemsadmin@nems:~$ date
Fri Jul  6 19:50:58 EDT 2018

That’s right… the date is correct after booting this way.

Strangely though, there are no updates in /var/log/dpkg.log – the last entry was in 2113.

Another interesting anomaly when checking the ntp service:

root@nems:/etc/network# systemctl status ntp
● ntp.service - LSB: Start NTP daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/ntp; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2113-08-28 07:22:22 EDT; 95 years 1 months left
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 4915)
   CGroup: /system.slice/ntp.service
           └─2006 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 104:107

Aug 28 07:22:26 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 144.217.75.74
Aug 28 07:22:26 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 144.217.65.182
Aug 28 07:22:26 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 158.69.226.90
Aug 28 07:22:27 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 54.39.13.155
Aug 28 07:22:27 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 144.217.181.221
Aug 28 07:22:27 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 144.217.242.233
Aug 28 07:22:28 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 209.115.181.108
Aug 28 07:22:28 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 199.182.221.110
Aug 28 07:22:29 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 144.217.240.204
Aug 28 07:22:29 nems ntpd[2006]: Soliciting pool server 2604:a880:cad:d0::66:8001
root@nems:/etc/network# 

Hmm, yeah… it has been running for over 95 years. Yet the date is correct on my system now.

root@nems:/etc/network# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Current default time zone: 'America/New_York'
Local time is now:      Fri Jul  6 19:57:42 EDT 2018.
Universal Time is now:  Fri Jul  6 23:57:42 UTC 2018.

Hmm….

root@nems:/etc/network# uptime
 19:58:04 up 8 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.10, 0.45, 0.36

So, let’s just try…

root@nems:/etc/network# reboot
Connection to 10.0.0.155 closed by remote host.
Connection to 10.0.0.155 closed.

And… wait for it….

robbie@bekah-desktop:~$ ssh [email protected]
[email protected]'s password: 
Linux nems 4.14.26 #1 SMP Sun Mar 11 16:34:42 UTC 2018 aarch64

Last login: Fri Jul  6 19:50:54 2018 from 10.0.0.107

Sweet.

Okay, so let’s leave the server running for 24 hours and see if this is a DHCP-related issue.

To be sure, I have indeed checked my router to make sure it’s not serving up bogus NTP timestamps, and it’s all good.

What’s Next? Read Part 5:

NTP on Debian reporting 95 years in the future – Part 5: Patching the Kernel