[ntp:questions] Standalone time server

Sullivan, George E. GEORGE.E.SULLIVAN at saic.com
Thu May 14 12:53:03 UTC 2009


First I want to apologize for asking this question.  I've looked online
for an answer to it and there seems to be a lot of questions like it.
But I haven't yet found a definitive answer.  Maybe I'm not phrasing the
search query correctly.

First is this even possible?  I have a server I want to be a time
server. It can NOT connect to the Internet.  It can NOT receive a signal
from some attached device. It can NOT receive a signal from a wireless
source.  All this is due to security constraints.  So the source of time
updates will be human initiated.  I'll have to act as the "time source"
and manually via the "date" command, enter the time.  I'll have to get
the time from an online source such as one of those atomic clock sites
or one of the real Internet Time Servers and set this server's clock
manually. Super/extreme accuracy is not critical, but keeping the
systems within a few seconds of each other would be nice.  I've noticed
some of my systems stray as much as a few minutes over a week or two.

So if this server can act as a human updated time server, then my
clients can potentially use the ntpd to update themselves or even use
ntpdate in a cronjob to update themselves.  Either is ok for my needs.

So, if this is possible what would my server's ntp.conf file look like?
Are there other files, instead, I need to configure?

Lastly, thanks to all you ntp gurus for considering this and for perhaps
helping.  Obviously you can tell I'm not proficient at working with ntp.

TECH:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server Version 5.3.
	NTP Version 4.2.2, actual RPM name is ntp-4.2.2p1-7.el5
	32 Bit, x86 Dell 2950
	Clients - a mix of Red Hat 3 update 4,5,6,7,8 and some Red Hat
4.

Regards

George Sullivan
SAIC IISBU
Columbia, Md.





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