NAME

rdate − set system date from a remote host

SYNOPSIS

/usr/etc/rdate  hostname

DESCRIPTION

Rdate is a shell script to set the local date and time from the hostname given as argument.  You must be super-user on the local system.  Typically rdate can be inserted as part of your /etc/rc.local startup script. 

BUGS

Prints ‘bad conversion’ if remote host unavailable.  Could be modified to accept a list of hostnames and try each until a valid date returned.  Better yet would be to write a real date server that accepted broadcast requests. 

Sun System Release 1.0  —  7 April 1983