Instances are not in sync

If the author and public instances are not using the same time, you may see the following error when you publish content: 

Activation refused due to request arriving too late or time not synced between author and public instance. Please contact your administrator to ensure server times are synced or the tolerance is set high enough to counter the differences.

The error is coming either from info.magnolia.publishing.command.PublicationCommand when using the Publishing module or from info.magnolia.cms.exchange.ExchangeException when using the Activation module. 

To resolve this issue, check the system time (server time) on both instances. Configure the servers to use Network Time Protocol (NTP) so that they could use the same time and stay in sync.

If you are still getting the error, then on your public instance(s) configure:

• With the Publishing module in use, a higher publicationDelayTolerance property:

  Node name	Value
  modules
  publishing-core
  config
  publicationDelayTolerance	60000

• With the Activation module in use, a higher activationDelayTolerance property:

  Node name	Value
  modules
  activation
  config
  activationDelayTolerance	60000

In both cases the properties allow for a time difference between the instances. The default value is 30,000 milliseconds (30 seconds).