[clug] Local NTP server?

Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net
Tue Dec 23 13:03:24 GMT 2008


"Andrew Janke" <a.janke at gmail.com> writes:

>>> 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?

No, but...

>> 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).

...you would need to configure your local clock to a higher stratum than
16 for this to work; 13 should be fine.  That way other clients will
listen to it happily.

> 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.

This is actually a pretty bad idea: it can cause quite a bit of software
to go wonky.  Getting NTP running on the local LAN is a much better
choice, really, even if the only reference is manually setting the clock
on the master system every now and then.

Regards,
        Daniel


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