[ntp:questions] Fwd: ntpd failed to log an error or message when could not synchronize

Pavan Sridhar pavansridhar at gmail.com
Tue Jul 9 14:34:28 UTC 2013


Hi Group,

NTP Version : 4.2.6

There are no errors or messages in msyslog.log when ntpd could not
synchronize to any servers.
We were interested to know if there is a feature in ntp where in, it would
log an error message when the time could not be synchronized in the server
and client due to a genuine hardware clock failure.

Our failure scenario is that :
ntpq -p showed that the offset kept advancing. The local clock would
advance 1 second for every 30 seconds elapsed time. The complaint is that
during the time when it wasnt working ntpd never logged an error or message.

ntpd was failing to log an error when it was not able to synchronize due to
bad hardware clock.
During this case reach was 377 and dispersion was > 1000. According to the
man page of ntpd: offset above 1000 seconds This is so far out of the
normal operating range that NTP decides something is terribly wrong and
human intervention is required. The daemon shuts down.
A Possible solution could be :
Synchronization takes place when reach is < 377 and dispersion is < 1000.
But when hardware clock
is bad, (eg: when it advances 1 second after every 30 seconds), dispersion
can never be below 1000. Under this scenario, we can log an error message
to the log file.

Keen to hear your expert thoughts

Thanks and Regards,
Pavan


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