Linux, modified files time stamp differs from current time

Question

I'm having trouble with the modification date of modified files. The problem is whenever I modify a file the modification date is set a few minutes ahead of the current date

touch a  
ls -l a
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 0 2012-09-02 10:49 a

date
Sun Sep  2 10:46:07 IRDT 2012

This seems to be causing trouble when I want to do a make

make[1]: *** File `Makefile' has modification time in the future

This is on a debian system which I connect to using ssh and I have no root access.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

If your sysadmin can't fix it any time soon, and you don't have root, you could just manually touch the file with a specific date (-t) instead.