Permission to set the Clock in Debian Linux

[naCougar]

I am brand new to Linux. And trying to learn Python at the same time.

I have written some python code for a client to query a server for the time and set the local clock. I am trying to run the code on Debian Linux and am having permission issues.

Here is a snippet of the program:
t = strftime('%H:'+'%M:'+'%S' , the_time)
system("date -s" + t)

I was able to get the clock to change the time, after changing the file’s permission to root.
Is there a better way to do this?

My second issue is using crontab to run the code every half hour. I used the GUI Kcron and it set up to run every half hour. It will not run, most likely due to more permission issues.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[HROAdmin26]

Changing the time on a system is a powerful command, so you need root access (by default) to do it.

You can:
A) Be logged in (or su) as root
B) Enable a regular user to run the command via sudo
C) Enable the SetUID bit on the date command (not desirable)

There is a Linux command/package called ntpdate. You can install it with:

apt-get install ntpdate

To update your time against an NTP server:

/usr/sbin/ntpdate pool.ntp.org

[naCougar]

Unfortunately I can't use ntpdate.

I have tried the SUDO option. I changed my date command to:
system("sudo date-s" + t)

I have changed ownership of my set_client.py code file to root.

Now I need to set it up to run every 30 minutes using cron/crontab or whatever.

There are so many folders with the word cron in them I don't know which to edit. I know how to use nano to edit the cron files.
I would like the program to run every 30 minutes and be initiated also upon reboot.

I edited /etc/crontabs using nano and inserted this line:
*/30 * * * * root /home/kevin/set_client.py

This is not working for me can anyone tell me which cron location to use and what the command line should look like.
Thanks!