[ntp:questions] ntpd just not working

Michael B Allen ioplex at gmail.com
Sat Oct 6 22:01:35 UTC 2007


Hi,

For some reason ntpd never seems to work for me. It looks like it is but
once in a while I start getting "clock skew too great" kerberos errors. I
can stop ntpd and do an ntpdate to sync up and I'm ok again for a while.

Here's all my info:

18899 ?        SLs    0:00 ntpd -u ntp:ntp -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g

# cat ntp.conf
restrict default ignore
restrict 127.0.0.1 
server 192.168.2.15
restrict 192.168.2.15 mask 255.255.255.255 nomodify notrap noquery
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/drift

# rpm -qa | grep ntp
ntp-4.2.2p1-5.el5

# cat /etc/redhat-release 
CentOS release 5 (Final)

# /etc/init.d/ntpd stop
Shutting down ntpd:                                        [  OK  ]
# ntpdate 192.168.2.15
 6 Oct 17:49:29 ntpdate[18940]: step time server 192.168.2.15 offset -304.547963 sec

Could it be that the ntpd that ships with CentOS is just crappy? Where
can I find a good ntp daemon that works?

Or is it because the machine is a cheapo AMD 64 thing I got from
Circuit City?

I should also mention that I'm running VMWare Server on the host. I would
suspect it was responsible but changing the time in VMs reverts to the
host time so I think that's good evidence that the host is authoritative.

I have also have kernel params 'acpi=off clock=pmtmr' (a previous effort to fix
this problem).

Another thing that may or may not be related is that occasionally, if I
leave an SSH session inactive for a few minutes, it becomes completely
unresponsive for 30 seconds. Then it suddenly starts working normally
again.

Any ideas?

Mike




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