[Samba] Time synchronization issues in Samba 4

[Michael Jones]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2020, 17:12 Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 2020-08-04 at 13:08 -0500, Michael Jones via samba wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 4, 2020 at 1:05 PM Rowland penny via samba <
> > samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
> >
> > > On 04/08/2020 18:59, Michael Jones via samba wrote:
> > > > I use systemd-timesyncd to sync time with the rest of the
> > > > internet.
> > >
> > > This is not supported by Samba
> > >
> >
> > Doesn't matter. It syncs the time on my host. Samba can just use the
> > time I
> > tell it.
> >
> >
> > You do not seem to have set any external ntp servers.
>
> That is, will ntpd report having good sync (and so serve to clients)
> with the only time source being a stratum 10 fudge?
>
> (S)NTP is more than just a 'tell me the time' protocol, and both
> clients and servers try hard not provide or accept 'bad' time
> estimates.
>
> Andrew Bartlett


Sure. All good points.

Before I used systemd-timesyncd and the ntpd configuration that I sent in
my initial email. My windows domain members refused to sync time.

After I added this config as I sent, they started syncing time.

The existing documentation for ntpd (e.g. the man pages, online resources,
so on) is woefully under explained and straight up wrong in a few minor
areas that I don't recall the details of (nor are the particularly relevant
to the samba list. I suppose)

Same goes for the samba configuration documented here :
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Time_Synchronisation

The config as provided (with appropriate file path changes) didn't work on
my Gentoo system. Whether that's because Gentoo does things weird or
because the config is wrong, I don't know. This was also about 6 months
ago, so details are fuzzy.