[clug] Local NTP server?

[Andrew Janke]

>> openntpd doesn't like to play games as a server unless it itself is in
>> sync first, monitor the syslog for a bit and when it is happy then try
>> to sync a client.
>
> Hmm.. ok so this might be the problem? The server I am syncing too has NO
> internet connection.. Does it need one in order to provide its own time to
> the network? I assumed not because the packets I captured seem to show
> everything talking nicely..

eee-yark!  now you have exhausted my knowledge, but I can only guess
that this will be a problem as your server is no doubt working at
"stratum 16" (the lowest of the lowly pond scum sucking time servers).
As David mentioned the usual source for external time is a GPS unit.
I can bet this is overkill in your case though as all you probably
want is to sync the clocks on the machines you have in order to make
NFS behave or something like that...

Perhaps just stick with something a bit more simple and run
rdate/ntpdate every hour from cron on the clients?   A bit ugly as
time will jump about on a clients a bit if your master is a bit wobly
with time.  Perhaps others will know if you can make all the machines
share time with each other, I am sure it is not a good idea to just
arbitrarily make one the master as there is no way to know which
machines clock is the "best".  For example a lot of the newer MB's I
have keep much worse time than some older PII's that I still have
sitting about for various reasons....

I understand that this might be because some newer MB's have
(apparently) a user adjustable clock...


a