[ntp:questions] ntpd oddness

Unruh unruh-spam at physics.ubc.ca
Tue Apr 1 23:32:44 UTC 2008


John Oliver <joliver at john-oliver.net> writes:

>I'm having a small issue with ntp-4.2.0.a.20040617-6.el4 running under
>Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 update 5.

>In the Kickstart script to configure the server, I specify:

>timezone --utc GMT/London

No idea what the timezone script does. 
cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT/London /etc/localtime
chmod a+r /etc/localtime



>After the installation is done:

>[joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ date
>Tue Apr  1 17:03:23 EDT 2008

>/etc/localtime is a real file:

The wrong one apparently.


>[joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ ls -l /etc/localtime
>-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1267 Jan 31  2007 /etc/localtime

>If I remove that file and replace it with a symlink:

>[joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ ls -l /etc/localtime
>lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 23 Apr  1 21:04 /etc/localtime ->
>/usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT

>The system clock displays correctly:

>[joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ date
>Tue Apr  1 21:05:09 GMT 2008

>But, now, the hwclock is always 12 hours off:

I guess you forgot to put the hardware clock on utc.



>[joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ /sbin/hwclock
>Tue 01 Apr 2008 09:05:39 PM GMT  -0.323329 seconds
>[joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ sudo /sbin/hwclock --systohc
>[joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ /sbin/hwclock
>Tue 01 Apr 2008 09:05:52 PM GMT  -0.776568 seconds


>1) Why is /etc/localtime a file by default instead of a symlink?  Is

Because /usr may not be mounted when something needs the time on intial
bootup. 


>this just some silly Red Hat-ism that has to be avoided?

No it is a good idea. A link could point to nowhere. 



>2) Why is my hardware clock 12 hours off from the system clock?

How do we know. Make sure it is set to utc and reset it. 
(look in /etc/sysconfig/clock)


>-- 
>* John Oliver                              http://www.john-oliver.net/ *

>-- 
>Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com




More information about the questions mailing list