[ntp:questions] GPS/PPS and "enable calibrate"

Horvath Bob-BHORVAT1 Bob.Horvath at motorolasolutions.com
Wed Sep 4 22:05:22 UTC 2013


I am trying to get a raspberry pi GPS-based stratum server functioning and I am confused how to use the "enable calibrate" function.  

I think I have figured out that to calibrate, you do the following:

1. Add "enable calibrate" to ntp.conf
2. "true" on "PPS" server line
3. "noselect" on the "GPS" reference clock to keep it from being used as a time source
4.  "prefer" on a legitimate good time server.  
5. "time1=0.0" on "GPS" fudge line


The calibration will take the PPS to be a good PPS signal, and will get the time of day from the "preferred" server.  

After a while, you can

1. Take out "enable calibrate"
2. Leave "true" there?
3. Take out "noselect"
4. Move "prefer" to the GPS line?
5. Change time1= ????


Or do I just leave it as I configured it the first time?


Here is my ntp.conf as it stands right now...

# /etc/ntp.conf, configuration for ntpd; see ntp.conf(5) for help

driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift


# Enable this if you want statistics to be logged.
statsdir /var/log/ntpstats/

statistics loopstats peerstats clockstats
filegen loopstats file loopstats type day enable
filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable


# Access control configuration; see /usr/share/doc/ntp-doc/html/accopt.html for
# details.  The web page <http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/AccessRestrict
ions>
# might also be helpful.
#
# Note that "restrict" applies to both servers and clients, so a configuration
# that might be intended to block requests from certain clients could also end
# up blocking replies from your own upstream servers.

# By default, exchange time with everybody, but don't allow configuration.
restrict -4 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer
restrict -6 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer

# Local users may interrogate the ntp server more closely.
restrict 127.0.0.1
restrict ::1

# pps-gpio on /dev/pps0
server 127.127.22.0 minpoll 4 maxpoll 4 true
fudge 127.127.22.0 refid PPS
fudge 127.127.22.0 flag3 1  # enable kernel PLL/FLL clock discipline


# gpsd shared memory clock
server 127.127.28.0 minpoll 4 maxpoll 4 noselect # PPS requires at least one pre
ferred peer
fudge 127.127.28.0 refid GPS
fudge 127.127.28.0 time1 +0.0  # coarse processing delay offset

server 129.188.147.100 iburst
server 10.177.0.120 iburst prefer

enable calibrate

... and here is what my ntpq -pn looks like....

(Looking at it now, I am not sure how much this will tell since it hasn't been running very long)

pi at ntpi ~ $ ntpq -pn
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
o127.127.22.0    .PPS.            0 l    2   16  377    0.000   -0.007   0.002
 127.127.28.0    .GPS.            0 l    1   16  377    0.000  -82.005  56.615
+129.188.147.100 129.188.147.99   2 u   15   64   37    1.400    2.213   0.321
*10.177.0.120    .GPS.            1 u   15   64   37   27.184   -0.826   0.117
pi at ntpi ~ $


As you can tell from the reaches, I just recently rebooted, so it has only been running several minutes.  If I remove those lines, I get something like this....

pi at ntpi ~ $ ntpq -pn
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
 127.127.22.0    .PPS.            0 l    -   16    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 127.127.28.0    .GPS.            0 l   14   16    1    0.000   50.397   0.002
+129.188.147.100 129.188.147.99   2 u   15   64    1    1.394  509.349   0.197
*10.177.0.120    .GPS.            1 u   16   64    1   27.503  506.499   0.188
pi at ntpi ~ $

The server is a raspberry pi with the Adafruit MTK339 GPS chipset.  It is running the image from here... http://ntpi.openchaos.org/downloads/

BTW, thanks to all the raspberry pi NTP guys out there that have gotten me this far!!

Bob







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