[ntp:questions] no drift-file on 2008 R2 vps and the time diff. is getting bigger and bigger?

Rob nomail at example.com
Sun Sep 14 11:35:54 UTC 2014


gooly <gooly at gmx.at> wrote:
>> When you want to sync it yourself, ntpd is not required at all, Windows
>> can do this itself.  Lookup the documentation for the windows time
>> service, you can configure it to use an external NTP server.
> I know! But w32tm is started to resync every x seconds. So it can happen 
> that  w32tm changes the time while I am logging which will disable a 
> later time-sort!

In the later versions of Windows including 2008 R2 it is possible to
use a "real NTP" mode instead of the SNTP that was used before.
I think it should try to lock on the reference instead of jumping all
the time.  But it does a poorer job than ntpd.
However, when the clock in the system is so bad as you describe, both
of these programs will fail to lock it.

>> It is not very accurate, but when you require really accurate time
>> a VPS is not for you.  Really accurate time requires a physical machine
>> and another operating system than Windows.
> But I can insist to require a clock with an offset less than 1 second 
> per hour or per 2 hours - no?

Well, I see that Windows virtual machines in the hands of poor operators
have difficulty to be within 2 seconds all the time.  However, that is
two seconds overall, not per 2 hours.
Microsoft considers this "good enough" because they use time only for
kerberos, not for real timing work.

Don't believe stories that it will never work on a VM.  I know I can
keep a Linux VM within 20ms all the time and within 2-5ms most of the
time.  However, Linux is not Windows and not all VMs are configured
reasonably.



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