'Automatic Date and Time' automatically disabled when trying to enable

[Grant Phillips]

When enabling the "Automatic DateTime" in the gnome control center, it instantly turns off.

The following is reported in syslog:

Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/dbus.socket:4: ListenStream= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket → /run/dbus/system_bus_socket; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/docker.socket:5: ListenStream= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/docker.sock → /run/docker.sock; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/smbd.service:9: PIDFile= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/samba/smbd.pid → /run/samba/smbd.pid; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/nmbd.service:9: PIDFile= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/samba/nmbd.pid → /run/samba/nmbd.pid; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: Starting resolvconf-pull-resolved.service...
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: resolvconf-pull-resolved.service: Succeeded.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: Started resolvconf-pull-resolved.service.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Network Time Synchronization being skipped.
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd-timedated[10725]: Set NTP to enabled
Jan 2 12:10:58 ubuntu systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/dbus.socket:4: ListenStream= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket → /run/dbus/system_bus_socket; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/docker.socket:5: ListenStream= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/docker.sock → /run/docker.sock; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/smbd.service:9: PIDFile= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/samba/smbd.pid → /run/samba/smbd.pid; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/nmbd.service:9: PIDFile= references a path below legacy directory /var/run/, updating /var/run/samba/nmbd.pid → /run/samba/nmbd.pid; please update the unit file accordingly.
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd[1]: Starting resolvconf-pull-resolved.service...
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd[1]: resolvconf-pull-resolved.service: Succeeded.
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd[1]: Started resolvconf-pull-resolved.service.
Jan 2 12:10:59 ubuntu systemd-timedated[10725]: Set NTP to disabled
Jan 2 12:11:03 ubuntu xdg-desktop-por[3204]: Failed to get application states: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed: Could not get window list: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: App introspection not allowed

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 19.10
Release: 19.10

$ apt-cache policy gnome-control-center
gnome-control-center:
  Installed: 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2
  Candidate: 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Do you have ntpd installed? If so then it's probably the same issue than bug #1848309

[Grant Phillips (grant-phillips)]

Confirming this is related to bug #1848309 except in this case was caused by VBoxService.

$ systemctl status systemd-timesyncd
● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service.d
           └─disable-with-time-daemon.conf
   Active: inactive (dead)
Condition: start condition failed at Mon 2020-01-06 22:27:32 AEDT; 4min 17s ago
           └─ ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/usr/sbin/VBoxService was not met
     Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)

Jan 04 17:09:56 ubuntu systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Network Time Synchronization being skipped.

After purging virtualbox-guest-utils and virtualbox-6.0, ntp sync was successful:

$ systemctl status systemd-timesyncd.service
● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service.d
           └─disable-with-time-daemon.conf
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2020-01-07 10:59:06 AEDT; 4min 14s ago
     Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)
 Main PID: 10499 (systemd-timesyn)
   Status: "Synchronized to time server for the first time [2001:67c:1560:8003::c7]:123 (ntp.ubuntu.com)."
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 4915)
   Memory: 1.7M
   CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-timesyncd.service
           └─10499 /lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd

Jan 07 10:59:06 ubuntu systemd[1]: Starting Network Time Synchronization...
Jan 07 10:59:06 ubuntu systemd[1]: Started Network Time Synchronization. ...