NTP Clock not updating until settings are unlocked

[nadams]

Seeing an odd issue with some of our student laptops. They are not admins on their laptops, and the NTP and time zone settings are pushed down by policies. When I look at the laptops, their date and time is way off... like, months off. All I have to do to resolve this is "unlock" the date and time settings with an admin account, and they immediately update and are fine.

So far, I've only seen 2 out of our ~400 student laptops, but it has me concerned that this is a bigger issue that we're not being told about.

Is there any reason why the clock wouldn't update until it's unlocked?

[sdagley]

@nadams The joys of no longer having a separate PRAM battery to maintain the clock when the main battery goes dead... We've about 1200 MacBook Airs at my site, and I've seen this problem on a lot more than 2 machines running macOS 10.10 through 10.12. Sometimes a reboot will make the machine notice the clock needs to re-sync, but sometimes only the "unlock" you describe works.

[CasperSally]

Are they off wifi because of the date/time problem?

For our students, they have to restart with ethernet plugged in to resolve, I believe. It's been an issue for years for students who let their batteries drain to nothing.

[sdagley]

@CasperSally We have a 2nd SSID active with WPA2 authentication for machines that can't connect to the primary SSID with 802.1x authentication so that shouldn't be an issue.

[nadams]

@sdagley @CasperSally

You have hit the nail on the head... They turned their laptops in at the end of the year and didn't have them shut down. They sat asleep in the bins until the batteries died, then we handed them back out at the start of the year with dead batteries. Guess that's going to have to change for next year...