[ntp:hackers] Reference Clock code for Windows - How can I contribute?
Danny Mayer
mayer at ntp.org
Sun Apr 27 03:01:19 UTC 2008
William Horner wrote:
> Danny,
>
> I am assuming that you are interested in reference clock driver code for
> Windows? I am also interested in seeing such drivers become more
> mainstream because NTP is such a good piece of software.
>
Of course we are interested.
> This is a note to ask about how I might be able to contribute modified
> Windows reference clock code back to the NTP project? Are you accepting
> such contributions at the moment, or are you getting too close to a
> stable release?
See Harlan's response on how to do that.
> I have managed to get the ARCRON reference clock driver working in
> Windows. Mainly because I have got two such clocks and they are
> surprisingly common in the UK (under various different manufacturer
> names) and although not very precise they do the job of backup time
> sources without complaint. Tardis has got the monopoly on these clocks
> at the moment along with Galleon but Tardis really doesn’t match up to
> NTP other than the fancy user interface. NTP pointing at Tardis as a
> synchronisation server isn’t the world’s best combination either.
> Tardis seems to claim it is perfect somehow and pretty much stops NTP
> from selecting any other sources, even our very good GPS ref clocks.
> This driver will stop all that and improve my time network without
> spending serious money.
Is Tardis running as a SNTP Stratum 1 server?
> At first glance, all is appearing well. The clock is sitting on my desk
> ticking away quite happily and next week is going onto a test server in
> the server room for further soak testing. It has also halved the
> typical offset I tend to see between the ARCRON clocks and a GPS
> reference. Still not quite as good as that quoted by other people for
> Linux/Unix so it would appear that Windows is still having the last say
> in the matter. But still well within the precision of this particular
> clock.
Maybe you still have some bugs in your changes or your setup is incorrect.
> I have tried to keep as much of the non-Windows bits as intact as
> possible – I am in no position to judge if they are good or bad, only if
> they work with Windows or not. Where necessary I have simply hidden or
> swapped incompatible code inside some #if macros. I am busy tidying up
> the code at the moment but have left most of the previous author’s
> synchronisation comments and code intact.
That's required since it needs to run on multiple platforms.
> I have had to work from 4.2.5p113 because 4.2.4p4 doesn’t compile in my
> environment. I am assuming you would be happy with that?
Since this is an enhancement it *should* go into -dev
> I do however have a couple of additional changes that I need to make and
> I am not totally sure about how to keep them reasonably compatible with
> other OSes. Would you be able to help me and provide advice, or at
> least point me in the right direction?
It depends on the nature of the changes. I cannot answer that without
seeing the code.
Which driver are you modifying? Is this the type 27 MSF_ARCRON?
Danny
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