Questions[time](server)

Is there any way to set a Docker containers system time dynamically (at run time) without effecting the host machine?

Using

hwclock --set --date "Sat Aug 17 08:31:24 PDT 2016"

gives the following error:

hwclock: Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method.
hwclock: Use the --debug option to see the details of our search for an access method.

Using

date -s "2 OCT 2006 18:00:00"

gives the following error:

date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted

Use case:

I need to test time sensitive software (behaviour depends on the date).

Other common use cases:

• running legacy software with y2k bugs
• testing software for year-2038 compliance
• debugging time-related issues, such as expired SSL certificates
• running software which ceases to run outside a certain timeframe
• deterministic build processes.

I have (for example) this log entry in dmesg output:

[600711.395348] do_trap: 6 callbacks suppressed

Is there a possibility to convert this 'dmesg' time to 'real' time to know, when this event happend?

What is the command to sync a Windows workstation or server to its configured time source?

How do I get the current Unix time in milliseconds (i.e number of milliseconds since Unix epoch January 1 1970)?

I'm certainly trying to achieve something weird here, but I want to fake the date locally for a shell session on GNU/Linux. I need to black-box test how a program behaves at different dates, and modifying the system-wide date can have unwanted side effects (cron jobs, messed up logs, etc).

Any ideas ?