AWS S3: The difference between the request time and the current time is too large

4 Jul 2023 · 1 min read

If system clock is out of sync, we may encounter error message like "An error occurred (RequestTimeTooSkewed) when calling the ListBuckets operation: The difference between the request time and the current time is too large."

ag@aj:~$ aws s3 ls

An error occurred (RequestTimeTooSkewed) when calling the ListBuckets operation: The difference between the request time and the current time is too large.

Fix:

I mostly use Ubuntu running on WSL for my local AWS development work and encountered this error few times

To fix, run sudo hwclock -s. It will sync up the system clock with the current time.

abhijit@awsjunkie:~$ date
Tue Jul  4 08:54:30 EDT 2023

sudo hwclock -s

abhijit@awsjunkie:~$ date
Tue Jul  4 10:59:18 EDT 2023

abhijit@awsjunkie:~$ aws s3 ls
2023-07-04 10:30:51 awsjunkie-time-sync-test

Demo:

Usage of hwclock command:

hwclock -h

Usage:
 hwclock [function] [option...]

Time clocks utility.

Functions:
 -r, --show           display the RTC time
     --get            display drift corrected RTC time
     --set            set the RTC according to --date
 -s, --hctosys        set the system time from the RTC
 -w, --systohc        set the RTC from the system time
     --systz          send timescale configurations to the kernel
 -a, --adjust         adjust the RTC to account for systematic drift     --predict        predict the drifted RTC time according to --date

Options:
 -u, --utc            the RTC timescale is UTC
 -l, --localtime      the RTC timescale is Local
 -f, --rtc <file>     use an alternate file to /dev/rtc0
     --directisa      use the ISA bus instead of /dev/rtc0 access
     --date <time>    date/time input for --set and --predict
     --delay <sec>    delay used when set new RTC time
     --update-drift   update the RTC drift factor
     --noadjfile      do not use /etc/adjtime
     --adjfile <file> use an alternate file to /etc/adjtime
     --test           dry run; implies --verbose
 -v, --verbose        display more details

 -h, --help           display this help
 -V, --version        display version