[ntp:questions] NTP Server Synchronizing with the incorrect NTP server

[jhunt1983 at gmail.com]

Problem:

I configured my NTP server in Linux to use the US Pool of NTP Servers in /etc/ntp.conf. I restarted the NTP service many times and the actual server many times, but it was not using the pool. I was verifying this by using the ntpq -p command. It was using a time server it picked up via DHCP when it was plugged into a completely different network. I had no idea where it was getting this information.

Solution:

After running strace (strace /etc/init.d/ntp restart) I was able to see it was picking up the configuration from /var/lib/ntp/ntp.conf.dhcp .

I deleted /var/lib/ntp/ntp.conf.dhcp, restarted NTP (/etc/init.d/ntp restart) and it synchronizes with the servers configured in /etc/ntp.conf now.