[ntp:questions] Use ntpd as a daemon so that it continuously disciplines clock, no

David J Taylor david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk.invalid
Mon Jan 17 16:51:47 UTC 2011


> For notebook users running ntpd only as an NTP client the extra wakeup
> per second may make a measurable difference in battery life.
>
> I was just pointing out it will take more resources than ntpd -q run
> twice a day. Of course, the accuracy will be orders of magnitude
> worse than continuosly running ntpd (even with poll 15 or 16).
>
> -- 
> Miroslav Lichvar

Yes, I appreciate what you were pointing out about resources, and normally 
I would agree with you.

However, David Malone reports 0.1% CPU for serving a thousand users, so 
the CPU for a single user will be far less, and negligible for a notebook 
user.  Likely the overhead of launching the new process would outweigh any 
CPU/battery saved.  On the PC I'm using right now, ntpd working ourely as 
a client has used 0.484 seconds total CPU in almost 2.5 days uptime, and 
around 5MB of memory.

Cheers,
David 




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