[ntp:questions] ntpd for embedded system

Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wolfgang.rupprecht+gnus200703 at gmail.com
Fri Mar 9 17:26:17 UTC 2007


dimss at telecentrs.lv (Dmitry Ivanov) writes:
> BTW, I am using Linux port of OpenNTPD for my embedded projects. Why?  
> Because openntpd is smaller than "real" ntpd. And it works good  
> enough for us. We have very limited flash memory...

One of my buddies used to run openntp on two of his opembsd x86
machines.  Those machines would regularly be 30 seconds (not
milliseconds) off of real time.  I think he got sick of me sending him
email saying his ntpd is insane again and he switched back to the
normal ntpd.

When his openntp was first started it would have fairly loose
tracking.  I'd always see 25-50 milliseconds offsets where ntpd would
have <5ms.  After a week or two there would just be some time swing it
wouldn't recover from and get launched out into left field.  One of
the complications may have been that he was also using ntp pools to
supplement his servers.  Openntp may just not have been as robust as
ntpd against bad timekeepers feeding it incorrect time.

I found the simplest way to monitor his system was to add it as a
"server" so that "ntpq -p" would show his current offset and jitter.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht                http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/




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