During validation of Windows as main operating system (which is still ongoing), I experienced strange issues when trying to build my blog using the jekyll/jekyll Docker Image running on Windows 10.

At some point, jekyll build printed strange warnings that my shiny new article wont be compiled because it has a date in future.

I checked the filename and frontmatter metadata of the post. However both looked good. So I dived a bit deeper and recognized that the date within the container was set to 25th of November whereas my host system was displaying the 27th of November.

I recognized this by looking into the running myblog container like this:

# running container
docker exec -it myblog sh

root@myblog $ date
Wed Nov 25 15:19:00 CST 2019

# kill
root@myblog $ [CTRL+D]

Without running container, you can spin up a new to verify like this:

docker run --rm -it alpine sh
root@342a34d $ date
Wed Nov 25 15:19:00 CST 2019

# kill
root@342a34d $ [CTRL+D]

A quick search brought me to this dedicated Docker Desktop for Windows issue.

Whats the problem

The problem only appears if you use Windows hibernation. Which is - for a notebook and former macOS user - a fairly common task. Anyways. If you put your machine a sleep using hibernation, the underlying Docker virtual machine (running in HyperV) will be hibernated too. However, when waking up your machine again, time synchronization doesn’t work anymore.

The differnce between time on host OS and within container is exaclty the duration between hibernation and first Docker Machine interaction after wake-up.

How to fix it

You can fix it either clicking through the HyperV Admin Interface and disable/enable Time Synchronization (SETTINGS - INTEGRATION SERVICES), or by using the following PoSh script:

# fix-docker-machine-time-sync.ps1
$vm = Get-VM -Name DockerDesktopVM
$feature = "Time Synchronization"

Disable-VMIntegrationService -vm $vm -Name $feature
Enable-VMIntegrationService -vm $vm -Name $feature

Another potential solution is to stop/start the Docker service after hibernation.

HTH