[ntp:questions] debugging cronic offset on Windows 2003 client

[David J Taylor]

> Just deployed the 4.2.4p8 NTP client to 50 Windows 2003 SP2 servers, and 
> all seem to be running fine...except...
>
> One or two of the clients develop an offset of about 16 seconds. 
> Restarting the service puts them back in sync with the NTP server, but 
> in a few minutes they're back to the old offset.
>
> What option can I add to the conf file to specify a log file?  I don't 
> seem to be able to modify the startup string in the service's 
> properties.  I tried adding "logfile <filename>" to the conf file, which 
> didn't seem to work.
>
> How can I raise the debug level?
>
> Thanks...Lyle

Lyle,

As a first step, I would check that the W32time service is not running, 
and that there's nothing on those servers which might try and restart it. 
I have little experience with Domains, but are those servers performing a 
different role to the others?  The NTP service normally write its entries 
to the Windows Event Log, so you could look there for entries from "NTP". 
I've written a little about basic fault-finding here:

  http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/setup.html#check

Someone will doubtless comment that the current version is 4.2.6, but 
let's try and get what you have working.

Cheers,
David