[ntp:questions] Re: Choice of time servers

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Wed Sep 20 12:47:28 UTC 2006


Bill Myers wrote:

> I have two flavors of Stratum 2 servers -- some older Sun servers that are
> basically out of capacity doing double duty as DNS cache servers, and a set
> of new Compaq RH Linux servers.
> 
> The Sun servers are running +/- 0.3 ms offsets to the Stratum 1's with
> default minpoll/maxpoll and other default settings.
> 
> The RH Linux servers are running +/- 1 ms, only after tweeking minpoll and
> maxpoll to 6 (64sec) and using burst.  I had one that wouldn't settle down
> even at 4 (16 sec) until we replaced it.  There is no load at all on these
> servers.
> 
> Is this an expected result?
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Check your Red Hat systems for the value of the kernel parameter "HZ". 
If it's 100 it's probably not the problem.  If it's 250 or 1000 try 
setting it to 100.

Using "burst" is a very unfriendly thing to do.  It places eight times 
the normal load on a server!  It was a special purpose hack, never 
intended for general use; unfortunately this fact was never well documented.




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