[ntp:questions] Re: Time sync for WinNT4

Danny Mayer mayer at gis.net
Tue Aug 30 03:07:16 UTC 2005


CBee wrote:
> Johnson Luqaz wrote:
> 
>> Dear Sirs, I have an office with 800 desktops running WinNT4 / Win2K 
>> /  WinXP.  I have installed ntp4 from meinberg, which was successful.  
>> I have  tried it with several sntp clients from different sources on 
>> several PCs.
> 
> 
> With M$WindowsNT4, Micro$oft supplied some ntp-software. I recall by 
> head it was either on the NT4 distribution disk or on one of the support 
> disks. Be noted, peek for 'ntp' in the directories of the disks, not in 
> the supplied index, you will not find it there.. I bet it can be found 
> somewhere on the internet too. It does a verry good job to keep the time 
> in sync, I recall by head it does genuine ntp, not sntp....
> 

No, Microsoft's current code does sort-of SNTP and it's still wrong. It 
is definitely NOT ntp compliant.

> With M$Windows 2000 and upwards, you can use `net time 
> /setsntp:ntp.your.domain` (see `net time /?` for some options). This 
> does a reasobable job, however, the sync time can be up to a week...
> 

This is like using ntpdate. It just queries the server and believes what 
it gets back. It does not try and make any decision about whether or not 
the response is reasonable.

> If the machines are inserted in an M$Windows-domain, by default the 
> domainserver it hooks to is also used to sync the time.
>
Which is only as accurate as the domain server may very well be 
described as "not very".
>>
>> Now I am looking to synchornize the client PCs.  Can anyone recommend  
>> windows commands to achieve this?
>>

You already have it when you used meinberg's installer to install ntpd.

>> Otherwise, we have CA Software Delivery installed.  Can anyone 
>> recommend a  sntp client suitable for installation via Software 
>> Delivery with ntp  server pointing to local server?
> 

If you have that you might be able to use the instsrv to do a service 
install and put the config file in the right place.
> 
> As far as I know, the `net time /setsntp` is a one-time action that puts 
> the settings in the machines registry. It should be described somewhere 
> and should be easy to setup.
> 
And not a reliable way of setting and maintaining time.

Danny
> 
> CBee
> 
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