[ntp:questions] Wanted: Quick way to check that all workstations have the correct NTP time.

[Danny Mayer]

David Woolley wrote:
> In article <45CBCB91.5060302 at comcast.net>,
> Richard B. gilbert <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> nicough at gmail.com wrote:
>>> 10 workstations (no internet access) running w32time, pulling time
>>> from my local NTP server.
> 
>>> How can I query my local NTP server, to check that all 10 workstations
>>> have the correct time?
> 
>> ntptrace will show you the offset from the server's clock.
> 
> ntptrace is unsupported and may be deprecated.

We have no plans to deprecate ntptrace that I am aware of.

  It uses mode 6 packets
> (ntpq) but w32time doesn't support them.  If w32time supported them one
> could use ntpq directly.  (ntptrace is a script that uses ntpq.  I think
> it only exists in Unix script form.)

It's actually a perl script. There is a C version. The script SHOULD be
using mode 3/4 packets for it's work. I might fix that at some point or
resurrect the C version which does use the mode 3/4 packets.

> 
> If you want a single command to check, you will have to write a script,
> but you should also be able to write one to poll and scan the event
> logs remotely.
> 
> (ntpdc monlist may give some indication, but I don't think it tells you
> if the client successfully synchronised.)

I found that Meinberg's NTP monitoring tool to be useful in these areas
though you would have to run it on Windows since it's a Windows GUI!

Danny