Quantum

Alright. Trust sacrificed. BTW, I am a 71yo real estate developer, which may explain my stupidity with coding, my not being able to ascertain streams of consciousness, nor plumb huge gaps in information. I would like to get some things done with the N2+, and the answer is Armbian is obviously not the way to do them. I have much bigger things to do than bit-twiddling. PS - NTPd doesn't fix time either.

I don't even have an HDMI device connected. Running it headless. And when you say Debian 13, are you describing a way to convert Armbian to Debian in-place? Because honestly, with its inability to set time and missing i2c buss, I've lost confidence in Armbian. But I don't understand the effect of your commands. Is this converting Armbian to Debian 13? Is there any way to just build Debian 13 on the SD card or internal EMMC?

I see. Ok so Armbian sees only one IRL i2c buss, and stuffs any 'inconvenient' other devices into a useless buss. IOW Armbian is busted, at least for the ODroid N2+. Why use it then?

I don't understand then, what is the problem?

esalarm: personally, I tear out systemd-resolved and netplan, and just use /etc/resolv.conf. (and chattr +i) In my LAN the gateway is designated DNS resolver running Unbound, so my situation is more normal. But that's not the reason systemd-timesyncd and chrony are not working. Neither one can set the time properly, even as properly configured. Using tcpdump I see the 123/udp request going out to the proper machine, and the response coming back... but it has no effect on Armbian. No firewall blocks. Time stays on whatever I set it to, and counts from there, always a few minutes behind or ahead. There is something fundamentally wrong with current Armbian.

I kind of thought it is common knowledge, but just go here: https://www.armbian.com/odroid-n2/ It's what I'm running. lol, yes I figured that out too, and aptitude purged netplan and systemd-resolved with extreme prejudice. In this graybeard's humble opinion these are solutions looking for problems. overlays, overlaying overlays of overlays. The inherent (and new) systemd-networkd they've snuck in without telling anyone, does suffice and is sensible. Somehow though systemd-timesyncd simply can not set the date/time, and neither can chrony which I've used for years. Much less the hardware clock. Ah, I have too much time invested in Debian on the N2+, and have never had any respect for Ubongo. But the purpose of this board is to time-control devices, so it would be nice to have the correct time. I've always used the C2032 battery.

@laibsch: Thanks, but your objections are worthless. You have zero sense of humor, son. @esalarm: As a Debian user since 1997 I did an aptitude purge between trying daemons. I can not make any of them set the time, as they usually do in normal Debian. There is something missing in the most current stable Armbian. I wish you would try it on an N2+. I am happy to use chrony, as I have for several years, although in this case it has no effect. But the new Debians seem to be moving to systemd for everything such as this, so I adapted. But that didn't work either. I can't be the only one; maybe the first?

Armbian current: It seems that the N2+ is [i]immune[/i] to Chrony and systemd-timesyncd. The only way I can set the date/time is manually through date -s. # systemctl status systemd-timesyncd ● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Mon 2025-11-24 13:06:59 PST; 31min ago Invocation: 50da85c1116348dbbd83cca270da6ff8 Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8) Main PID: 1185 (systemd-timesyn) Status: "Idle." Tasks: 2 (limit: 4227) Memory: 1.6M (peak: 2.3M) CPU: 79ms CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-timesyncd.service └─1185 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd Nov 24 13:06:59 lab systemd-timesyncd[1185]: System clock time advanced to recorded timestamp: Mon 2025-11-24 13:06:59 PST Nov 24 13:06:57 lab systemd-timesyncd[1185]: Network configuration changed, trying to establish connection. Nov 24 13:06:57 lab systemd-timesyncd[1185]: Network configuration changed, trying to establish connection. Nov 24 13:06:57 lab systemd-timesyncd[1185]: Network configuration changed, trying to establish connection. Nov 24 13:07:01 lab systemd-timesyncd[1185]: Network configuration changed, trying to establish connection. Nov 24 13:07:11 lab systemd-timesyncd[1185]: Timed out waiting for reply from 10.2.1.10:123 (10.2.1.10). No, the network configuration has na-ha-hot, changed, Spastic. I see via tcpdump, the request going out 123/udp and the response, coming back. The information arrives at the destination. But it hits a hard rock head and disintegrates. Of course if it can't set the system clock, there's no sense trying to make it set the RTC. How is this possible in the 21st Century? Does time, no longer matter to Gen Z? Is this the precursor to the Apocalypse? Should I convert to religion and start praying?