[lug] Network time

[Nate Duehr]

Many of the docs on NTP make it seem much harder to set up than it
really is for most of us, because they were written by folks who need
ultimate precision.

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For NTP setup, on your "master" machine, just edit /etc/ntp.conf and add
something like this (replacing the time servers with lower stratum 
servers... this is just a working example...)

# Using NIST Atomic Clock and Naval Observatory
server time-a.nist.gov
server time-b.nist.gov
server tick.usno.navy.mil
server tock.usno.navy.mil

# If you're going to have two "masters", which you probably don't
# need...
peer timeserver2.yourdomain.com

# Get a logfile where you want it...
logfile /var/log/ntpd
driftfile /etc/ntp/driftfile

That should do it for server 1.  

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For your client machines...

# Using timeserver1.yourdomain.com and timeserver2.yourdomain.com
server timeserver1.yourdomain.com
server timeserver2.yourdomain.com
logfile /var/log/ntp
driftfile /etc/ntp/driftfile

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That basic config will work fine.  If you want to get fancy you can use
NTP's abilities to do a lot more in the future and it gives you room to
grow into more knowledge of how to use it.  Stuff like multicasting time
packets so clients don't have to establish a session to the server, and
adding key authorization between your clients and servers and other fun
stuff can come later... and this configuration will get you started.

Hopefully that helps.  This is a totally simple config and you can do
more later with it.  It's just to show that NTP really isn't that hard
(and certainly not as detailed as DNS!).  ;)

On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 02:14:44PM -0500, John Karns wrote:
> I'm interested in a *simple* method (if there is such a class in the world
> of *nix) to set the clock of a dial-up machine via the net.  The method
> proposed here in a recent thread ("ntpdate time-nw.nist.gov") would do
> fine for this part.
> 
> Then I would like to propagate this time to various other Linux boxes on a
> *small* net.  I don't need all the complexity of ntp, which seems to be
> about as involved as setting up DNS (lord help us!).  I really don't care
> if my clocks are set to the precision of a cesium clock, and it's not a
> big deal if there is are a few seconds difference between various
> machines.
> 
> Is there a way of doing this without setting up an ntp server on my local
> net?
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> John Karns                                              jkarns at csd.net
> Bogota, Colombia                                  Voice: 57-1-341-0300
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com>

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