[ntp:questions] ntpd -x option

David Woolley david at ex.djwhome.demon.co.uk.invalid
Fri Mar 13 22:33:38 UTC 2009


Unruh wrote:
> David Woolley <david at ex.djwhome.demon.co.uk.invalid> writes:

>> I should also have pointed out that the 500ppm slew rate limit is 
>> imposed by *n*x kernels, not by ntpd.  In the case of -x, which forced 
> 
> No it is not. the kernel limit is 1 part per 10, by altering the tick rate.
> There are two adjustment parameters, the tickrate and the frequency. ntp
> uses only the frequency adjustment which is limited to 500PPM, and does not
> adjust the tick rate.

We are talking about the user space discipline.  That was written for 
the adjtime (no-x) system call, even if it might sometimes now use 
adjtimex.  In user discipline mode, it does not directly control the 
frequency at all.  In V3, it simply divides the phase correction into 4 
second chunks and asks the kernel to slew by the appropriate amount each 
4 second interval.  I think v4 does this every second.

The kernel then runs the clock fast or slow for enough of that period to 
apply the period's phase correction.  With some kernels, the last tick 
may be at 100, 200, 300, 400 or 500ppm, although some are limited to 
just using 500ppm.  The result is that the effective frequency is a 
three level squarish wave, typically alternating between zero and just 
one of the polarities, most of the time.  The phase error is the 
integral of this, so has a sawtooth pattern.

I think the tick field is there to support another legacy system call 
tickadj, which allowed one to modify this value and the value that 
corresponded to the 500ppm slew rate, used during adjtime (no-x) 
corrections.  I think that tickadj wasn't universal across *n*ces, and 
it isn't present in Linux 2.6.  adjtime seems to be implemented in libc, 
presumably in terms of adjtimex.




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