[ntp:questions] NTPD silently not tracking

Joe Gwinn joegwinn at comcast.net
Sat Aug 31 23:53:29 UTC 2013


In article <kvre7q$j89$1 at dont-email.me>, E-Mail Sent to this address
will be added to the BlackLists
<Null at BlackList.Anitech-Systems.invalid> wrote:

> Magnus Danielson wrote:> BlackLists wrote:
> >> What ntpdc commands did you issue, and what results did you get?
> 
> > Unfortunatly no. I got the call after the fact,
> >  but lack of remote login due to time error would prohibit
> >  me from doing anything anyway.
> > The server needed to be operational rather than optimize
> >  for NTP debugging.
> 
> What ntpdc commands did the other people issue?
> 
> Kinda hard to try and duplicate / troubleshoot with no real info,
>  except its broke.
> 
> 
> >> Have you tried a newer version of NTP ?
> 
> > No, I listed the affected version as packaged by Debian.
> 
> Supposing there is an real issue,
>  perhaps it has already been fixed in a more recent version.
> 
> 
> > It has 2 stratum 1 and 3 stratum 2 unicast servers configured.
> >  NTP wise this machine is a client with 5 configured servers.
> > The problem was that it was way off time with no apparent indication,
> >  which is wrong.
> 
> Don't use Undisciplined Local Clock 127.127.1.0
> 
>  It can run away all by itself, and there is nothing wrong with that.
>   If that is a issue change to orphan.
> 
> 
> Provide all information necessary to duplicate & troubleshoot the issue?
> 
>  ntp.conf, (obstruficate as necessary);
>   ntpdc commands issued to monitor the server.
> 
> Without those, I don't think anyone can hope to guess if there really is a issue,
>  or even begin to troubleshoot the issue if it does exist.

I've experienced total failure to discipline the clock twice, each with
its own cause.  

The first was that the sysadmin forgot to give the NTP daemon
sufficient privilege, so the OS kernel silently ignored the commands to
tick a little faster/slower.  

The second was when we had a version of Solaris that had a known kernel
bug.

In both cases, the symptom is that local time steadily diverged from
that of the timeserver, with nary a complaint from NTP.

Joe Gwinn



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