Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request
From: chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: rdate
Keywords: SunOS
Message-ID: <115@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 5 Jul 89 12:31:28 GMT
Sender: root@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
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Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 70, message 2 of 15

> Does anyone have the protocol for Sun's rdate and the corresponding
> daemon?

I am sure other more enlightened readers will provide more detailed
information, but I discovered that rdate uses the most trivial of
"protocols".  Simply open a socket to the desired host on port 37.  The
host will send back four bytes, in network byte order, which contain the
time, in seconds, since 1 Jan 1900.  If you subtract (unsigned) 2208988800
from this, you'll get Unix time (from 1 Jan 1970).

This service on port 37 seems to be a fundmanetal service of inetd on most
any Unix machine.  I used this to implement rdate for our MIPS machines.

Chuck Musciano				ARPA  : chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com
Harris Corporation 			Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck
PO Box 37, MS 3A/1912			AT&T  : (407) 727-6131
Melbourne, FL 32902			FAX   : (407) 727-{5118,5227,4004}

Oh yeah, laugh now!  But when the millions start pouring in, I'll be the one
at Burger King, sucking down Whoppers at my own private table! --Al Bundy