How can I get the time of a remote server? - php

Question

I am currently working on a websever that will create a quick diagnose dashboard of other servers.
My requirement is to display the time of these remote servers, it seems that the NTP create some issues and I would like to see that.
I currently have a bat file on my desktop that simply send
net time \\SRV*******
I have also tried:
echo exec('net time \\\\SRV****');
=> result is '0'
But I would like to find a better solution in PHP so anybody of a team can read it on a webpage.
Any idea what I would do?
Note: this is not related to How to get date and time from server ad I want to get the time of a REMOTE server and not local server

Answer 1

You can use NTP protocol to retrieve datetime from a remote server.
Try this code:
error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);
ini_set("display_errors", 1);
date_default_timezone_set("Europe/...");
function query_time_server ($timeserver, $socket)
{
$fp = fsockopen($timeserver,$socket,$err,$errstr,5);
# parameters: server, socket, error code, error text, timeout
if ($fp) {
fputs($fp, "\n");
$timevalue = fread($fp, 49);
fclose($fp); # close the connection
} else {
$timevalue = " ";
}
$ret = array();
$ret[] = $timevalue;
$ret[] = $err; # error code
$ret[] = $errstr; # error text
return($ret);
}
$timeserver = "10.10.10.10"; #server IP or host
$timercvd = query_time_server($timeserver, 37);
//if no error from query_time_server
if (!$timercvd[1]) {
$timevalue = bin2hex($timercvd[0]);
$timevalue = abs(HexDec('7fffffff') - HexDec($timevalue) - HexDec('7fffffff'));
$tmestamp = $timevalue - 2208988800; # convert to UNIX epoch time stamp
$datum = date("Y-m-d (D) H:i:s",$tmestamp - date("Z",$tmestamp)); /* incl time zone offset */
$doy = (date("z",$tmestamp)+1);
echo "Time check from time server ",$timeserver," : [<font color=\"red\">",$timevalue,"</font>]";
echo " (seconds since 1900-01-01 00:00.00).<br>\n";
echo "The current date and universal time is ",$datum," UTC. ";
echo "It is day ",$doy," of this year.<br>\n";
echo "The unix epoch time stamp is $tmestamp.<br>\n";
echo date("d/m/Y H:i:s", $tmestamp);
} else {
echo "Unfortunately, the time server $timeserver could not be reached at this time. ";
echo "$timercvd[1] $timercvd[2].<br>\n";
}

Answer 2

You can use a powershell script along with WMI (assuming your servers are windows machines)
This will be way faster than the old net time style.
The script needs to be executed with a Domain-Admin (or any other user that has WMI-query permissions)
$servers = 'dc1', 'dc2', 'dhcp1', 'dhcp2', 'wsus', 'web', 'file', 'hyperv1', 'hyperv2'
ForEach ($server in $servers) {
$time = "---"
$time = ([WMI]'').ConvertToDateTime((gwmi win32_operatingsystem -computername $server).LocalDateTime)
$server + ', ' + $time
}
You can achieve this with a scheduled task every 5 minutes.
If you want to display the time "with seconds / minutes" (I wouldn't query each server too often, as time does not change THAT fast), you could add a little maths:
When executing the script, don't store the actual time, but just the offset of each server, compared to your webservers time. (i.e. +2.2112, -15.213)
When your users are visiting the "dashboard" load these offsets and display the webservers current time +/- the offset per server. (Could be "outdated" by some microseconds then, but do you care?)

Answer 3

Why so complicated?
Just found that this is working:
echo exec('net time \\\\SRV****, $output);
echo '<pre>';
print_r($output);
echo '</pre>';