[ntp:questions] Re: [ntpwg] Re: sntp: rejects packets from ntpd when "disable ntp" is used

Daniel Kabs daniel.kabs at gmx.de
Tue Mar 21 08:38:31 UTC 2006


Hello!

Harlan Stenn wrote:
> As I said in my reply, I don't believe ntpdate will sync in this case
> either, and I think this patch is an amazingly bad idea.

On the time server machine, I am currently using ntpdate to acquire 
remotely the time offset of my unsync'd systems.  nptdate works for this 
application (calculating and printing the time offset). And yes, you are 
also right, it refuses to sync. :-)

Example:
# /usr/sbin/ntpdate -q 10.0.0.100
server 10.0.0.100, stratum 16, offset -0.727935, delay 0.03511
21 Mar 09:54:53 ntpdate[26279]: no server suitable for synchronization found

> I'm open to hearing any reason why somebody would want to sync to an
> unsync'd clock, and I'll be impressed and amazed if this topic is worth
> discussing in the WG.

My use case is not to sync but only to get the time offset (in order to 
calculate the skew). As ntpdate will be retired soon from the official 
distribution, I'd suggest that maybe sntp could behave in the same way 
as ntpdate does: acquire the time offset (including uttering complaints) 
but refuse to sync (command line options -r or -a?).

Cheers
Daniel




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