How is system time set? Is ntpdate run after the network is ready? How long does it retry waiting for the network to be available? I have seen a number of challenges becuase the system time is bac at the epoch start as there is no battery rtc. And I wonder how many armv7 boards have a battery to maintain time across boots? Minimally, a process could right the time, in the proper format, to a file, say /etc/currenttime every 5 min and at shutdown. Then date can be run early in the boot process, piping this file in. It would not be perfect and does not help, much for new installs, but better than epoch start. Plus /etc/currenttime can be at least set to the image build date/time so not even firstboot will be at epoch start.