small tools: gpsdate

In 2013 I wrote a small Linux program that can be usded to set the system clock based on the clock received from a GPS receiver (via gpsd), particularly when a system is first booted. It is similar in purpose to ntpdate, but of course obtains time not from ntp but from the GPS receiver.

This is particularly useful for RTC-less systems without network connectivity, which come up with a completely wrong system clock that needs to be properly set as soon as th GPS receiver finally has acquired a signal.

I asked the ntp hackers if they were interested in merging it into the official code base, and their response was (summarized) that with a then-future release of ntpd this would no longer be needed. So the gpsdate program remains an external utility.

So in case anyone else might find the tool interesting: The source code can be obtained from http://git.sysmocom.de/gpsdate/