Flint 3 time sync issues - chrony

[dervari]

Just bringing this over here since visibility. Haven’t gotten an update since 1/9 on reddit.

Original Thread Here

Chrony appears to be broken on the Flint 3. Noticed that my time was WAY off and initially went down the NTP rabbit hold until I was told that is was replaced by CHRONY in this build. Well, it appears that chrony is acting up as the chronyc command can’t talk to the daemon. Is this expected behavior?

[will.qiu]

Hi

Please:

1. Check if chronyd is running correctly:

ps | grep chronyd

2. If it is not running, check the logs to determine the cause:

logread | grep chronyd
# OR
chronyd -d

[dervari]

Nothing for ps or logread, but did get this for chronyd -d

root@GL-BE9300:~# chronyd -d
2026-01-20T14:31:07Z chronyd version 4.4 starting (+CMDMON +NTP +REFCLOCK -RTC +PRIVDROP -SCFILTER -SIGND +ASYNCDNS +NTS -SECHASH +IPV6 -DEBUG)
2026-01-20T14:31:07Z Fatal error : Could not get user/group ID of chrony

Searched /etc/passwd and /etc/group. No entry for chrony.

[will.qiu]

We checked the Flint 3 on v4.8.3 firmware, and the chrony user and group are added correctly by default.

It seems that something else in the router mistakenly deleted the chrony user and group.
You can try reinstalling chrony-nts using the following command; it should automatically recreate the user group.

opkg remove chrony-nts
opkg update && opkg install chrony-nts

But if this doesn't work, may need to reset the router to factory settings to restore.
Repair network or reset - GL.iNet Router Docs 4