Time, NTP & DNS

Set at first boot, changeable any time — from the CLI or the web UI. All three surfaces read and write the same state, so wherever you look, you see the truth.

Why the clock matters

The HTTPS certificate is minted on the appliance — mint it on a wrong clock and every browser may reject it as “not yet valid” (TLS).
Log timestamps, scheduled scans, baselines and reports all follow the system clock.
Isolated and egress-filtered networks cannot reach public NTP pools — the factory default only works where the internet (or a DHCP-provided server) does. Point the appliance at your internal time source.

Checking the current state

innovexus> show time
hostname:          innovexus
FQDN:              innovexus.example.com
time:              2026-08-25 14:21:09 EDT
timezone:          America/New_York
NTP:               enabled
NTP servers:       ntp1.corp.example ntp2.corp.example
syncing with:      ntp1.corp.example
clock sync:        synchronized
DNS in use:        10.0.0.53

The same information appears in the web UI under Settings → System, in the Appliance panel.

Changing NTP servers & timezone

From the CLI

innovexus> configure ntp
…current state shown…
NTP servers, space-separated. Blank keeps the system default
(DHCP-provided when your network offers one).
  > ntp1.corp.example ntp2.corp.example
NTP servers set: ntp1.corp.example ntp2.corp.example

Timezone, e.g. America/New_York or UTC. Blank keeps the current one.
  > America/Chicago
timezone set: America/Chicago

Unlike configure network or configure tls, this applies live — no services restart and the web UI stays up. Synchronization with a newly configured server takes up to a minute; re-check with show time.

From the web UI

Settings → System → Appliance: edit the NTP servers field (leave it empty to return to the system default) and the appliance system timezone, then Save. Changes take effect immediately and are visible in show time.

Two timezones, two jobs. The appliance system timezone (this page) stamps service logs and schedules on the box itself. The display timezone at the top of Settings → System controls how the dashboard renders times for its users. They can legitimately differ — an appliance in a UTC datacenter serving a New York team, for instance.

DNS: interface DNS vs. the override

Normally the appliance uses the DNS servers that come with its network configuration — from DHCP, or the static servers given in the wizard (configure network changes those). Separately, you can set a DNS override: global servers (and optional search domains) that take precedence without touching the network configuration.

Web UI: Settings → System → Appliance → DNS override. Clear both fields to remove the override and fall back to interface DNS.
The override survives DHCP renewals and re-IPs — useful when DHCP hands out DNS servers the appliance should not use.
show network and show time both display the DNS actually in use; nslookup <name> tests resolution through it.

Seeding for unattended installs

# /var/lib/innovexus/setup.conf — pre-seeded keys skip the wizard prompts
NTP_SERVERS=ntp1.corp.example ntp2.corp.example
TIMEZONE=America/New_York

Leave NTP_SERVERS empty (key present, no value) to accept the system default without being prompted.