[ntp:questions] offset slowly increases while ntpd is running?

matthew.garman at gmail.com matthew.garman at gmail.com
Wed Feb 7 01:06:56 UTC 2007


We have an ntp server running on "server3", to which three other
machines sync: "server1", "server2", and "server6".

servers 1 and 2 sync correctly to server3.  server6 is a new machine
that we are having troubles getting to sync (and stay synced).

Basically, from server6, we can run "ntpdate server3".  Then we
start the ntp daemon on server6.  Using "ntpdate -d server3" and/or
"ntpq -p", we can watch the offset between server6 and 3 slowly
creep upwards.  Today, within about a 10 minute window, the offset
drifted up to about 50ms.  A rapid increase in offset seemed to
correlate with heavy CPU load.

We are still doing testing to determine the specifics of the
problem.

Has anyone seen anything similar to this?  We're not particularly
well versed with ntp, so we're not even sure if we're testing things
correctly!

FWIW, this new machine is a Dell PowerEdge 1950 with dual quad-core
CPUs.

Thank you for any assistance!
Matt




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