[ntp:questions] Getting SNTP to accept large corrections

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Wed Jan 16 20:44:45 UTC 2008


Christopher Nelson wrote:
> I have a system without a battery-backed clock and I want to get some
> semblance of the right time at boot up using sntp.  Since the time
> starts out decades off, I need to accept a large correction on my
> initial request.  I'm using sntp from NTP 4.2.4p0 and I don't seem to
> be able to convince it to just take whatever time is provided.  I
> ended up patching it to have a prompt threshold of INT_MAX but I'd
> rather have a command line option that said, "Just this once, trust
> me."  Is that expectation way off?  Is anyone else using sntp to get
> an initial clock setting when the default time is way off?  How do you
> cope with that?


Have you tried starting ntpd with the -g option?  This is supposed to
tell ntp to set the clock to a reasonable approximation of the correct
time at startup.  It doesn't care if you're off by ten seconds or ten years!

I don't know if there is an option to set the clock and exit!  I don't 
use sntp but there might be an option to allow setting the clock.




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