[ntp:questions] Inforamtion required

Brad Knowles brad at stop.mail-abuse.org
Wed Aug 31 08:31:10 UTC 2005


At 6:01 PM +0530 2005-08-30, SivaKumar Subramani wrote:

>  We have downloaded the NTP source 3.5-93e and compiled for solaris8
>  version and we would like to have some clarification on the below
>  mentioned point  can anyone help us to resolve this.

	Note that this version is ancient.  Even version 4.2.0-RELEASE is 
almost two years old, and that's the latest official -RELEASE 
version, although we have continued to produce updated -STABLE 
tarballs since.  Version 4.2.1-RELEASE should be coming within the 
next couple of weeks or so.

	At the very least, you should seriously consider updating to 
version 4.2.0-RELEASE.

>  1. We use NTP daemon as client and for synchronize the time with our
>  machine and NOT to provide any time services. If the time diff between
>  our system to timeserver is too large the daemon comes out and issues a
>  log message as "offset : -19698 is too large set clock manually". Our
>  system shall always run with local timezone, this can't be able to
>  modify. Is there any way to avoid this through conf command.

	This has nothing to do with timezone.  NTP operates exclusively 
in the UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) timezone.  All conversions 
from UTC to any other timezone are handled as a representation issue 
by the system routines which are called to display or provide time 
information.

	The timezone conversion display routines have been common to 
pretty much all computer OSes that have been created in the last 
thirty years or so.  There's nothing new here.


	If your clock is too far out-of-sync, then the NTP daemon will 
refuse to try to fix it, and will exit instead.  This is normal 
behaviour.  If you want to try to force the NTP daemon to fix the 
time on startup, then you need to make sure that the startup scripts 
call it with a "-g" parameter on the command-line.

	After startup, if the time offset gets too large, then the NTP 
daemon will be unable to correct the clock, and the daemon will kill 
itself.

>  2. Is it possible to AVOID the NTP to set my local system time, is there
>  any alternative to run my clock without disturbing the system clock.
>  We'll be using this time information to forward to someother client, who
>  shall maintain the TOD.

	If you don't have NTP correct the system clock, just what other 
clock do you think that you have in the machine which NTP could 
correct?!?

	Everything, EVERYTHING, *EVERYTHING*, comes off the system clock. 
That is the one and only clock that NTP can monitor and manage.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.



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