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

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