[ntp:questions] Re: Why so many dead NTP servers in pool.ntp.org?

Raphae prosolutions at gmx.net
Tue Dec 13 22:08:53 UTC 2005


On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:37:48 +0200, Tapio Sokura <oh2kku at iki.fi>
wrote:

>Raphae wrote:
>> when running the command
>> 
>> # ntptrace pool.ntp.org
>> 
>> 
>> more than half of the servers in the pool seem to be dead.  Isn't
>
>Are you sure that they are dead, or just not responding to NTP control 
>mode (mode 6) packets? Because mode 6 is what ntptrace uses, when the 
>actual NTP time queries are sent/received using modes 1-5. All pool 
>servers that I just tried did answer to normal time queries (mode 3) 
>just fine. Some server operators choose to restrict mode 6 queries, that 
>is completely acceptable by the pool rules.
>

Thank you for your response.  I am setting up the NTP daemon from
ntp.org and am a bit confused.  In ntp.conf there is no mention of any
modes.  

Currently I have been using rdate to set my system clock using
tick.greyware.com.  

Now that I have installed NTP things have become more complex.  It
seems that to configure it to be a server one also has to configure it
to be a client to some other NTP servers.  I am not really sure what
is the daemon and what is the client portion of this program.  The
config file for the daemon has a server parameter which makes it seem
as though it is a client.  As far as configuring it as a server - if
for example I want it to be accessible to clients running "rdate"
(which is not mode 6??  not sure what "mode" it uses...) there don't
seem to be options in ntp.conf for this.

This is all so complex for a newbie.  Unfortunately also the ntp
package doesn't contain standard man pages but refers you to html
documentation which seems to be more theoretical in nature but not
very useful for the practice of setting up a server.




More information about the questions mailing list