[ntp:questions] PSYCHO PC clock is advancing at 2 HR per second

Dave Hart davehart at gmail.com
Tue Mar 20 04:11:43 UTC 2012


On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 03:56, Ron Frazier (NTP) wrote:
> Hi Dave H,
>
> Thanks for the info and for looking into the issue.  I meant that the clock
> was psycho, not the PC.

Right, I got that.  You were ever so politely screaming for attention
regarding software I volunteer to help maintain.  How may I snap to
your service?

>  The PC is normally very tame and cooperative, as cooperative as Windows
> gets anyway.  These GPS experiments have certainly brought several
> surprises though.
>
> I run both Windows and Ubuntu Linux, but in this case, the system is:
>
> Windows 7 Home Premium SP 1
> NTPD 4.2.7p259
>
> LOCL has been removed.  However, that brings up a question.  Since I'm doing
> tests with the internet clocks noselected (but still monitoring them), and
> the GPS is the only selectable clock, what happens if it becomes invalid?
>  The whole reason I put LOCL in there was to allow the machine to "coast" if
> the GPS signal became invalid.

The behavior of the local clock discipline is not any different with
no selectable sources than with only the LOCAL driver selectable.
Where it makes a difference is clients will not continue to follow a
ntpd server which has no selectable sources, but will follow one using
LOCAL as a fallback.  Your machine will freewheel the same either way.
 Only clients will care about the difference, and if that's an issue,
orphan mode may provide a more resilient solution.

Still, as much as I doubt using the LOCAL clock driver is optimal for
you, I know a lot of people are in the habit and want ntpd to behave
well even when that driver is in use, regardless of my opinion of its
utility in that case :)

> How would I go about checking the event log?

Using the Event Viewer, eventvwr from a command line or right-click on
Computer and select Manage.

Good luck,
Dave Hart

> On 3/19/2012 10:59 PM, Dave Hart wrote:
>>
>> Ron,
>>
>> I don't know what the heck happened either, but there are a few clues.
>>  You didn't tell us which version of ntpd you're using or which OS
>> it's running on.  Skimming the huge ntp.conf for non-comment lines I
>> see it appears to be some version of Windows.
>>
>> Take note of the last line in the first loopstats file you sent:
>>
>> 56005 85287.065 -1.#IND00000 -1.#IO 0.003538719 -1.#IND00 3
>>
>> There is no activity in the corresponding peerstats file to give a
>> hint what sent your offset and frequency off the deep end.  You might
>> check the eventlog around the end of the 19th UTC to see if there are
>> any clues there.
>>
>> Although it's the first time I've seen such, it appears the offset and
>> frequency calculations both ended up overflowing.  I would have
>> guessed bad input should have appeared in peerstats before loopstats
>> but I didn't find anything unusual.  It does appear the GPS was
>> unplugged or stopped sending or sent sentences indicating no lock,
>> based on the last peerstats entry for 127.127.20.5 occurring almost
>> exactly 5 minutes before the overflow event.
>>
>> Probably we should just write it off as nominal since the PC is
>> described as psycho.
>>
>> Take care,
>> Dave Hart
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 01:59, Ron Frazier (NTP)
>> <timekeepingntplist at c3energy.com>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I just came home from supper to the most NOT charming experience.  I had
>>> left with my PC clock syncing nicely to my Globalsat BU-353 GPS.  When I
>>> came home, I found the clock said Aug 2014 and visually could see that
>>> the
>>> clock was advancing at a rate of about 2 HR per actual second.  The
>>> Meinberg
>>> screen said it was locked into the local clock and the Meinberg screen
>>> appeared to be updating about twice per second rather than once ever 10
>>> seconds.  It said that the preferred clock was LOCL 127.127.1.1.  I don't
>>> know what the heck happened, but these anomalies are getting really old.
>>>  Hopefully the Sure board will do better.  Oh, by the way, I shut down
>>> NTPD
>>> and the clock kept advancing the same way.  2 reboots appear to have
>>> fixed
>>> it.  I've removed LOCL from the config file.  Here are some links to some
>>> log and conf files if anyone is interested.  Note the dates at the end.
>>>  I've got 1200 log files in between these start and end dates.
>>>
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/ntp.conf%20psycho%20clock
>>>
>>>
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/loopstats.20120319-2-above-priority-gpgga96-poll-3-6%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/loopstats.20120320%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/loopstats.20120321%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/loopstats.20120322%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/loopstats.20120323%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/loopstats.20140112%20psycho%20clock
>>> note
>>> the date far into the future
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/loopstats.20140113%20psycho%20clock
>>>
>>>
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/peerstats.20120319-2-above-priority-gpgga96-poll-3-6%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/peerstats.20120320%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/peerstats.20120321%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/peerstats.20120322%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/peerstats.20120323%20psycho%20clock
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/peerstats.20140824%20psycho%20clock
>>> note
>>> the date far into the future
>>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9879631/peerstats.20140825%20psycho%20clock
>>>
>>> Sincerely Frustrated,
>>>
>>> Ron
>>>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, don't be concerned.
> I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy mailing lists and
> such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.  If you need a
> reply and have not heard from me in 1 - 2 weeks, send your message again.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> timekeepingdude AT c3energy.com
>
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