Weeping Angel Time Research
SECRET // REL US, UK
Time on Smart TV
TV Time
Go to Menu System > Time > Clock to configure/view time displayed anywhere on TV
Auto time pulls time based on timezone and DST
Manual can be used to set time different from timezone
When TV is unplugged on manual, time resets to –:– and requires configuration
TV Time is not effected and appears unrelated to the System Time
SmartHub pulls time from this setting
Backend (implant side) system time does not match or effect TV time
System Time
The system time resets to Unix Epoch (1 Jan 00:00:00 1970) each time the TV is unplugged
The system time persists when remote is used to turn TV off (in fake-off mode)
date command prints current system time (UTC)
Files created in the file system use the time reported by date as their creation/modification times
Files created in /mtd_rwcommon with current (2014) timestamps remain unaltered even when TV resets to Unix Epoch on power cycle
TODO: test implant to ensure timestamps on audio files use same time as reported by date
NTP Syncing
ntpd and rdate (deprecated) are NTP clients included with BusyBox and can fetch time from server but cannot set local system time
Error reported: "settimeofdate: bad address" related to underlying implementation in BusyBox
ntpclient (http:// doolittle.icarus.com/ntpclient/) is an NTP client for unix-alike computer and is a small subset of xntpd (not included in BusyBox)
Recommended by BusyBox in "External Tiny Utilities"
Compiled for Linux on 32-bit build environment. Ran on Virtual Machine to test functionality
Attempted to cross-compile for ARM but got error related to glib version
Found pre-compiled ARM build on SamyGo forums (forums.samygo.tv/download/file.php?id=1248)
Ran on TV using:
/mtd_rwcommon/ntpclient-arm -s -h pool.ntp.org
Successfully updated system time from Unix Epoch to current time reported by NTP server (uses different method of setting time than BusyBox)
-s flag for simple (implies -c 1) and -h for NTP host
Returns string in format:
<days since 1900<secs since midnight> <NTP transaction time> <internal server delay> <clock difference bt local and NTP (μS)> <dispersion> <adjtimex frequency (not implemented on ARM)>
Check ntpclient-2010/README and HOWTO for more details on flags and reported strings
HOWTO also has details on measuring and logging systems performance
ntpdate does not exist on the TV or in BusyBox
Syncing with NTP servers changes the System Time but appears to have not effect on TV Time
Clock Drift
Several simple attempts were made to measure the time drift
Started at 15:50:30 UTC on 6 AUG with System Time synced to pool.ntp.org
In approximately 22 hours, the drift on the TV was less than 1 second
No clarity was given beyond seconds is given by date so exact ms drift could not be determined
Same time period on Linux laptop yielded 600ms drift
Look into ntpclient's logging and measuring characteristics of hardware clock over period of time
Sync scripts (not started)
Sync time with NTP server on power-on and once? per day
Use non-US related NTP server
mx.pool.ntp.org - Does not currently have enough (1 active) servers in country/time zone
Recommend using north-america.pool.ntp.org (721 active)