How to read "time" from a Tomcat server?

Question

Is there a command i can issue to get the exact system time that the remote Tomcat server is using? And then is there a command or some way (with applicable admin rights) to set the remote time?

The idea is the sync'ing of the different PC's I am hoping to use, if there is some other way used I am grateful to hear it. I am setting up a distributed system that's running in Linux.

Answer 1

Check the web for the "ntpd" daemon and/or the "ntpdate" commands. You may also need "hwclock".

As for getting/setting the time remotely, you need some access to the server for that. If you have command-line access, "date" is your friend. If not, create a Tomcat webapp using any of the multiple date/time java classes to achieve this.

Answer 2

Depending on how you look at it - use the HTTP spec and look at the Date response header

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.18

The above technique doesn't require shell access and is an "easy" way to get the date of ANY webserver. (read the spec for caveats)