Question

I’m having a problem where when I edit a file, it’s modified timestamp is set to a time in the future

Illustration of the problem:

$ make
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.
$ touch makefile
$ make
make: Warning: File `makefile' has modification time 19 s in the future
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make: warning:  Clock skew detected.  Your build may be incomplete.

If I edit the file that same thing happens (ie: this is not a problem unique to touch)

More details:

$ date
Thu Jan 24 20:18:19 EST 2013
$ ls -l
total 24
-rw-rw-r--. 1 steve steve 13907 Jan 24 20:18 makefile
-rw-rw-r--. 1 steve steve    23 Jan 24 19:54 modules.mk
drwxrwxr-x. 3 steve steve  4096 Jan 24 19:54 test
$ touch makefile 
$ ls -l
total 24
-rw-rw-r--. 1 steve steve 13907 Jan 24  2013 makefile       <-- in the future!
-rw-rw-r--. 1 steve steve    23 Jan 24 19:54 modules.mk
drwxrwxr-x. 3 steve steve  4096 Jan 24 19:54 test
$ ls -l
total 24
-rw-rw-r--. 1 steve steve 13907 Jan 24 20:18 makefile
-rw-rw-r--. 1 steve steve    23 Jan 24 19:54 modules.mk
drwxrwxr-x. 3 steve steve  4096 Jan 24 19:54 test
$ date
Thu Jan 24 20:18:48 EST 2013

How can I edit the file and have it’s modified time set to now?

Answer 1

I had the same problem a long time ago using NFS. It drove me crazy! The host where the files were stored and my own computer where not syncronized in time. I had to request the system managers to install NTP.