The TLDR-Q: What is the proper / intended approach in Kali for configuring date / time synchronization?

I am not clear on the intended approach to time / date synchronization in kali given several factors, on a vanilla 2023.1 rolling kali install:

  1. Time and Date settings

    Going into the settings in the UI, I tried to turn on date synchronization ("Keep synchronized with Internet servers"), but immediately receive the error dialog:

    Screenshot 2023-03-21 at 11.54.40 AM.jpg

    That didn't seem right -- I made sure ntpsec was enabled and running, ntp.conf settings and logging were configured, and then tried it again. Same problem....seems settings doesn't detect NTP.

    Code:
    systemctl list-unit-files | grep ntp
ntpsec-systemd-netif.path                  enabled         enabled
ntp.service                                alias           -
ntpd.service                               alias           -
ntpsec-rotate-stats.service                static          -
ntpsec-systemd-netif.service               static          -
ntpsec-wait.service                        disabled        disabled
ntpsec.service                             enabled         disabled
ntpsec-rotate-stats.timer                  enabled         enabled
ntpsec.timer                               masked          enabled
    This shows both ntp and ntpd are aliased to ntpsec, which appears to be running fine per an NTP query:

    Code:
    $ ntpq -c sysinfo
associd=0 status=0018 leap_none, sync_unspec, 1 event, no_sys_peer,
system peer:       65-100-46-164.dia.static.qwest.net:123
system peer mode:   client
leap indicator:               00
stratum:                       2
log2 precision:              -24
root delay:               45.379
root dispersion:          45.446
root distance              28.26
reference ID:      65.100.46.164
reference time:    e7c483ab.80c7d744 2023-03-21T19:27:39.503Z
system jitter:          4.480355
clock jitter:           17.00058
clock wander:                0.0
symm. auth. delay:           0.0
    Note that I also started the ntpsec-wait service and retested Time and Date settings, and received the same error.

  2. timedatectl output

    I ran a simple test to see the state of system clock synchronization.

    Code:
    timedatectl
               Local time: Tue 2023-03-21 12:34:04 MST
           Universal time: Tue 2023-03-21 19:34:04 UTC
                 RTC time: Tue 2023-03-21 19:34:04
                Time zone: America/Phoenix (MST, -0700)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: n/a
          RTC in local TZ: no
    I noticed that while the clock shows as synchronized, the NTP service shows as "n/a". So I tried to start NTP and received this:

    Code:
    timedatectl set-ntp true                 
Failed to set ntp: NTP not supported


I asked really the overarching question about how to get this working at the very top of this post, but not knowing a number of things about the design intent here (and checking the kali release doc to see if there was anything mentioned there about this, and found nothing), I had a number of questions:

  1. Why would time synchronization not be directly configurable from the UI right out of the box -- is there some reason this is undesirable?
  2. What is the intended approach to getting time synchronization working in a matter consistent with the UI (or at least all parts of the system working in tandem)?
  3. Most of the online resources I've come across do not use ntpsec, but other packages (ntp or ntpd directly / differently). I'm assuming the intent was to leverage the existing ntpsec installation -- can someone help out how to do this?


I really appreciate any help given. While I have this question in general for any kali installation, I'm trying to define a base VM image which will be leveraged for many other cloned VMs, so it is important I get this right, or else my future redo may be multiplied. Thx again for your help!