[lug] NTP question

[Nate Duehr]

NTPd is also usually configured by default to sync you up slowly to the
correct time... this is a "Good Thing(TM)" for databases and things that
don't like to go backwards in time...

It depends on the distro and the settings...

As someone pointed out, most distros (I guess RedHat now too... according to
the other post...) are moving toward having the box do an ntpdate as it
comes up and then firing up ntpd to stay there...

Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Neal McBurnett" <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>
To: <lug at lug.boulder.co.us>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 7:07 PM
Subject: Re: [lug] NTP question


> The NTP daemon is for *tracking* good time, and will only sync if you
> are close - a protection to avoid causing cron problems and other
> weird things if your machine or your ntp peers are really fouled up
> due to time-zone problems, etc.
>
> ntpdate is the sort of thing to use to *set* good time before starting
> ntpd up, since that makes ntp it get to a good frequency much more
> quickly.
>
> The redhat init scripts, e.g. are designed to do this right:
>
> /etc/init.d/ntpd
>
> So just install ntp, and say "service ntpd start"
>
> Looks like it uses either /etc/ntp/step-tickers or there is a "-g"
> option to ntpd to permit it to make a big change.
>
> Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
> GPG/PGP signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  Keyid: 2C9EBA60
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 06:32:35PM -0700, Steve Sullivan wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm learning to use NTP, but it doesn't seem to work.
> > I'm running Redhat 7.3 on a pentium.
> >
> > ntpdate works great.
> >
> > So I decided to try ntpd.  I deliberately set my clock 20 seconds off,
> > and set up /etc/ntp.conf.  Then I started /etc/rc.d/init.d/ntpd,
> > and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  45 minutes later and my clock
> > is still 20 seconds off.  What am I doing wrong here?
> >
> > Here is my /etc/ntpd file:
> > =========== /etc/ntpd ========
> > restrict default ignore
> > restrict 127.0.0.1
> > server 204.34.198.41
> > server 132.163.4.103
> > server 128.138.140.44
> > server 164.67.62.194
> > driftfile /etc/ntp/drift
> > ========== end file ========
> >
> > And the only log entries during that period are ...
> > Mar 17 17:49:23 helix ntpd[27373]: ntpd 4.1.1 at 1.786 Mon Apr  8 06:30:52
EDT 2002 (1)
> > Mar 17 17:49:23 helix ntpd[27373]: precision = 31 usec
> > Mar 17 17:49:23 helix ntpd[27373]: kernel time discipline status 0040
> > Mar 17 17:49:23 helix ntpd[27373]: frequency initialized 0.000 from
/etc/ntp/drift
> > Mar 17 17:49:23 helix ntpd: ntpd startup succeeded
> >
> >
> > Meanwhile it appears that ntpd hasn't touched a thing in file /etc/ntp:
> > $ ls -al /etc/ntp
> >    4 drwxr-xr-x    2 ntp      ntp          4096 May  8  2002 ./
> >    8 drwxr-xr-x   79 root     root         8192 Mar 17 17:47 ../
> >    4 -rw-r--r--    1 ntp      ntp             4 Apr  8  2002 drift
> >    4 -rw-------    1 root     root          266 Apr  8  2002 keys
> >    0 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root            0 Apr  8  2002
step-tickers
> >
> >
> > What have I overlooked here?
> >
> > Many thanks!
> >
> > Steve
> >
> >
> >
> > ========================================
> > Steve Sullivan    sullivan at mathcom.com
> >
> >    Mathcom Solutions Inc.: Custom Software Development.
> >     * Mathematical optimization, simulation, and modeling.
> >     * Data mining, information retrieval.
> >     * Java, XML, C++, Mathematica, Matlab, XSLT, XQuery, SOAP, RMI, ...
> >
> > http://www.mathcom.com    303-494-7115
> > ========================================
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