Ntp

Ubuntu messed about with several ways to do ntp clock sync. This finally worked:

• make sure systemd-timesyncd is installed and active (it is by default)

sudo systemctl status systemd-timesyncd.service

• update /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf, fixing two things:

sudo emacs -nw /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf 
---
[Time]
NTP=time.google.com          # google more reliable than ubuntu, perhaps
FallbackNTP=ntp.ubuntu.com   # might as well fallback, tho
RootDistanceMaxSec=55        # THIS SEEMS VERY IMPORTANT, the default of 5 was timing out