[ntp:questions] Getting SNTP to accept large corrections

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Thu Jan 17 01:14:18 UTC 2008


Christopher Nelson wrote:
> On Jan 16, 4:21 pm, da... at ex.djwhome.demon.co.uk.invalid (David
> Woolley) wrote:
> 
>>In article <558d2358-f9b3-4696-9874-4d2e12c55... at t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>>Christopher Nelson <cnel... at nycap.rr.com> 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
>>
>>NTP timestamps are ambiguous over periods of several decades.  You need to
>>preset the time to rather better than that before you run anything that
>>depends on NTP.  In particular, anything that starts at the Unix epoch will
>>not get the correct time from NTP.
> 
> 
> That's an interesting idea.  I could have my startup script initialize
> the time to something this decade so that the delta vs. the NTP-
> provided time is only years.  Thanks.

Why not initialize to 2008?  Next January make it 2009, etc.  It's low 
maintenance and puts you within 364 days, or less, of the correct time.




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