[ntp:questions] ntpd, boot time, and hot plugging

Alain alainm at pobox.com
Sun Feb 6 21:46:06 UTC 2005


This thread has gone very complex, so I here are my coments to many 
massages:

-----------------
David L. Mills escreveu:
 > Normally, ntpd exits with a message to the system log if the offset
 > exceeds the panic threshold, which is 1000 s by default. This option
 > allows the time to be set to any value without restriction; however,
 > this can happen only once. If the threshold is exceeded after that,
 > ntpd will exit with a message to the system log. This option can be
 > used with the -q and -x options. See the tinker command for other
 > options.

I do understand the explanetions. I just had missed was how things were 
*intended* to be used.

Now the 1000s exiting IMHO is just one more problem that I have to write 
a script to make it work. Why does it have to exit at all? It looks just 
a like a good way of waking up one day and ntp has stopped 20 days ago 
an all clocks have gone havock.

My suggestion is that there should be a "allways keep trying" option.

------------------
David L. Mills escreveu:
 > I did the same thing as you, but ntpd -gq with 8 servers and iburst
 > set the clock in 8 seconds, not 45. This includes DNS. Did yours stall
 > in DNS? Each of the g, q and x option descriptions has a sentence that
 > mentions that the option can be used in conjuntion with the other two.

I did some optimizind, but never got less that 45s with ntpd. I believe 
that DNS was not an issue just because I did all testes repeatedly and 
intermixed on the same machine and got consistent results.

I just hope that before ntpdate is definitely toched, a quick start 
(withou exist) option exist for ntpd :)

------------------
Per Hedeland escreveu:

 > [...] In the context of a special
 > startup mode for ntpd, with ntpd resuming normal operation before that
 > accuracy was achieved, I'm not sure I understand where this "required
 > accuracy" would fit in... - should ntpd somehow signal the environment
 > at the point when it was achieved?


Well, that is desirable. In fact it was a quation in my personal queue: 
How do I know when ntpd is ok and started serving?


-----------
Brad Knowles escreveu:
 >     Switching to testing ntpd, using my ISPs upstream nameservers, I
 > can't tell you how long it took the first time, because my system
 > clock was so screwed up by the previous recovery that it came up with
 > a date/time stamp in 1970, after which the execution of ntpd caused
 > it to reset it's clock to 1934.

I am glad to see that things like that don't happen only to me...


Thanks all,
Alain



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