[ntp:questions] Issues with w32tm on AD network

Danny Mayer mayer at ntp.isc.org
Thu Feb 28 03:43:47 UTC 2008


Martin Burnicki wrote:
> Jason Rabel wrote:
>> I *believe* you can also tell the PDC (via some w32time command) that the
>> primary time source is another machine, and all clients will use that. Of
>> course that means another machine to manage rather than just installing
>> ntpd on it.
>>
>> If you search the MS website for words like "NTP Domain Controller"
>> there's a lot of info that pops up.
> 
> I've already read a bunch of KB articles about Windows time synchronization.
> Unfortunately most of those articles care about special problems with
> w32time, while other articles are pretty common only and don't cover
> specific scenarios.
> 
> A common configuration for our customers which install a PCI card as a
> primary time source would be as follows:
> 
> - Install the PCI card in the root PDC
> 
> - Since w32time does not support the PCI card directly, install our driver
> which is shipped with the card and let the PDC's system time be
> synchronized by our driver.
> 
> - Run w32time (or ntpd) configured not to touch the system time but make the
> diciplined time available on the network
> 
> This is pretty easy using ntpd with local clock at stratum 0, but we have
> not been able to find a reliable way to configure w32time so that it
> behaves as desired.
> 
> We have tried different registry settings, e.g. running
> 
> w32tm /config /reliable:yes
> 
> resulting in "AnnounceFlags" set to 5
> 
> Sometimes w32time has been working correctly for some time, but then
> after a day suddenly stopped delivering time to it's clients.
> 
> So the best and most reliable configuration seemed to be to specify an
> "external" NTP server on the PDC, which runs ntpd.
> 
> BTW, I've searched the MS pages again for the keywords you mention, and I
> only receive search results when I start searching on www.microsoft.com. If
> I start searching at support.microsoft.com the search returns no results,
> which is pretty poor (for MS).
> 

I usually find what I'm looking for using Google! Microsoft search is 
pretty poor for their own site.

Danny
> 
> Martin




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