[ntp:questions] reading loopstats file, converting day and time

anna_cheng11 at yahoo.com anna_cheng11 at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 23 03:18:49 UTC 2009


Hi, I need some help in interpreting the loopstats file, hope someone
can help
I have ntp configured so that it is generating the loopstats file, the
file format is the following

54854 852.338 0.000779917 -85.871689 0.001363577 15.650605 10
54854 2390.510 -0.000000876 -85.871689 0.000993395 13.553822 10

checking the link http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-s-trouble.htm
the entries represent

day, second, offset, drift compensation, estimated error, stability,
polling interval

I understand that it should create a new loops.YYMMDD every day,
however, I noticed that the new file was created at around 7:00 pm
EST. For example, today is 01/22/09, it was writing to loops.20090122
this morning, but at around 7:00 pm, it started to write to the file
loops.20090123, is it because it is based on UTC? is there any way to
have the file created based on EST?

the day and second are based on Julian Day and UTC, are there any
simple way to convert them to calendar day besides using a script? I
may be able to convert Julian Day to calendar day, but how can we
convert UTC to the EST time?

I assumed the offset is the same offset as in ntpq -p in millisecond
and the drift compensation is the same output as drift file for clock
frequency error, but what are estimated error, stability and polling
interval ? What are the unit of measurement? which output will be
useful for monitoring potential problems?

thanks for the help




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