[ntp:questions] Wrong time after changing hardware

Per Hedeland per at hedeland.org
Wed Jul 25 14:45:02 UTC 2007


In article <ywn9abtlmmos.fsf at ntp1.isc.org> Harlan Stenn
<stenn at ntp.isc.org> writes:
>>>> In article <f85ur1$2tus$1 at hedeland.org>, per at hedeland.org (Per
>Hedeland) writes:
>
>Per> In article <f853tk$73b$1 at scrotar.nss.udel.edu> "David L. Mills"
>Per> <mills at udel.edu> writes:
>>>  It has been the case for the life of the distribution that, if you don't
>>> specify a frequency file, it will never be written.
>
>Per> Which reminds me, the ntpd "manual page" at
>Per> http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/ntpd.html wrongly claims that
>Per> there is a default of /etc/ntp.drift, both in the description of the -f
>Per> option and in the "Files" section.
>
>I think that is correct - it is the default place where NTP will *look* for
>a drift file, and if it finds it there, it will write to it.
>
>I *think* that independent of this defalt value or one provided by -f, if
>the file does not exist ntpd will not create it.

Hm, maybe someone that actually *knows* could comment - I'm not able to
check it out myself ATM. I'm not quite sure what you're actually saying,
but I know for a fact that

a) with the drift file specified in ntp.conf, ntpd will create it if it
doesn't exist (this is also the only sane behaviour, since as we just
discussed, you don't have anything to put in the file before starting
ntpd the first time)

b) saying that the default value of an option -y is "foo" *should* mean
that specifying '-y foo' is equivalent to specifying nothing at all - if
some other meaning is intended, it should be spelled out.

Further I have to assume (this is also indicated by the above page) that
-f has the same semantics as the 'driftfile' directive in ntp.conf.

--Per Hedeland
per at hedeland.org




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