Time Drift on MacBookPros

[walts_9]

We are occasionally seeing MacBookPros (2016 and 2017 with Touch Bar) with time drift. Sometimes the time and date will be up to a week off.

Time settings are already pointing to our domain as they should be. The common factor these MacBookPros have is that the time drift only occurs when the battery dies. Once they connect back to our domain, the settings correctly update in a few minutes.

Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone have any tips on how to prevent this altogether?

[AVmcclint]

I have added the following command to the Daily check-in ntpdate -u 10.x.x.x and this helps nudge the clocks into alignment on a daily basis. If a user let's their battery drain all the way over the weekend, there's not much we can do about that other than lecture them not to do that. But I can say that adding the daily time sync has helped a lot.

[walts_9]

@AVmcclint Yeah I've tried that before, but we still have people that accidentally let the battery drain. Unfortunately, having that forced once a day usually works about the same as waiting for the MBP to set the time automatically once it sees our domain again. I was hoping maybe there was a different solution, but social training is better than nothing. Thanks!

[tomt]

I've seen others post this solution: Add a DNS entry in your domain for time.apple.com and point it to your internal time server. Then change all systems to use time.apple.com as their primary server. That way the system will update itself anywhere and at least be close to your internal time.

If the user is technical, you can have them boot into the recovery partition and run a time update in the terminal.

[walts_9]

@tomt That sounds like a good idea, but our security policy prevents us from using time.apple.com.

[tomt]

So your systems are completely unable to set their time when off your network?