[ntp:questions] NTPD 4 hours off date problem

X.B. xbntp at mailinator.com
Mon May 9 13:45:47 UTC 2005


Hello,

i'm using ntp ( 4.2.0 ) with a GPS Trimble 'Acutime' antenna and the 
palisade driver.

Everything works ok, but i've the following problem :

The computer i'm using has no cmos battery, so each time it is cold 
rebooted, the internal clock is set to something around 01-01-2000.

In this case, ntpd -g -q cannot set up the date correctly.
Nor can ntpd -g ...

I've gone through the source code, and found that antenna's NTP packets 
are thrown out (1) because the date they contain is more than 4 hours ( 
CLOSETIME 4*60*60 ) off the system date ... So ntpd refuse to set the date.

Alas, this 4 hours delay check cannot be disabled using -g

I couldn't find any reasonable solution to overcome this problem.

- ntpdate ( which seems to become obsolescent ) cannot work with the 
acutime ( as far as i understand )
- i've no other time reference that the Gps antenna. So i cannot set the 
date even aproximatively
- i cannot come and manually set an aproximative date each time the 
computer gets cold-rebooted :)

I've surely missed something, as i cannot be the only guy on earth using 
   NTP and a GPS antenna to set the time/date of a computer without CMOS 
clock ...

Thanks in advance

(1) in clocktime called by refclock_process ( clk_badtime event ).



More information about the questions mailing list