[ntp:questions] Correcting a large time difference

Richard Heritage rheritage at jhu.edu
Fri Jul 30 16:19:18 UTC 2010


I've inherited a RHEL 5 server that isn't running ntp and whose clock is about 30 minutes fast. What I would like to do is start ntpd & have it gradually correct the clock. I don't care how long it takes--it's been running this way for months. The server runs an email application that may be sensitive to a large backward jump in the clock, and leaving the server down for a half hour isn't a good option. 

I don't know ntp very well, but from reading it appeared to me that if I put "tinker panic 0" in ntp.conf and started ntp with the -x option it would do what I want. However, on a test server the correction occurred all at once. Is there a way to accomplish what I want?


Richard Heritage
Lead System Software Engineer
IT @ Johns Hopkins






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