GitHub action shows action start time in future and usage time in negative

[Prince2347X]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Bug

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Metrics & Insights

Discussion Details

When I dispatched a GitHub action, the action start time was started with 'in 59m 59s' and after the completion of the action, the time was still in future (subtracting the time elapsed). And the usage time is shown in negative seconds. This was pretty confusing, I thought there's an error in my self-hosted runner setup but upon running the action multiple time, I can conclude it's a GitHub Actions issue.

[github-actions[bot]]

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[AhmedSAAhmed]

This definitely looks like a bizarre bug, but it is actually a known quirk with self-hosted runners! The issue is almost certainly a system clock desynchronization on the machine hosting your runner.

Here is what is happening under the hood: GitHub's backend records the exact moment the workflow is triggered using its own synced UTC servers. However, during execution, the self-hosted runner reports the step start and end timestamps back to GitHub using its own local system clock.

If your runner's system clock is ahead of actual time (in this case, it looks like it is off by exactly 1 hour, which often points to a Timezone or Daylight Saving Time misconfiguration), the GitHub UI does the math and spits out future start times and negative execution durations.

How to fix this:
You need to synchronize the system time on your self-hosted runner machine.

Linux: Ensure an NTP daemon (like chronyd or systemd-timesyncd) is active and synced. You can usually verify and fix this by running timedatectl status and ensuring NTP service: active.

Windows: Force a time sync in the Date & Time settings, or run w32tm /resync in an elevated command prompt.

Docker/K8s: If the runner is containerized, ensure the host node's clock is synced, as containers inherit the host's kernel clock.

Once the runner's system clock matches standard time, those negative seconds will disappear on your next run!