[ntp:questions] Re: simple time server

David Woolley david at djwhome.demon.co.uk
Tue Aug 1 20:33:48 UTC 2006


In article <56459.bryanh at giraffe-data.com>,
bryanh at giraffe-data.com (Bryan Henderson) wrote:

> more complex (judging from debug messages, its demanding superuser
> privilege, and the fact that it put my kernel in the hardware clock
> updating mode).

It needs root privileges to bind to port 123 and to be able to set the
clock, when acting as a client.

> Ideally, I'd like something simple enough it could even run via Inetd.

> Is there such a program available for Unix?

Yes.  inetd, itself!

port 13 will give you the kernel's wall clock time in ASCII and
port 37 will give the UTC time in Unix internal binary format.

Note these only have one second resolution, but if you were expecting to
have to start a program everytime, you weren't particularly interested in
high accuracy.

Vendors often disable these on the basis that you disable all ports
and then enable those that are actually used.

Note that using the undisciplined local clock on ntpd, except as a last
resort fall back, is generally frowned upon.




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