[ntp:questions] drift value very large and very unstable

Andy Helten andy.helten at dot21rts.com
Fri Mar 7 20:36:28 UTC 2008


Richard Gilbert wrote:
>
>
> A comment in ntp.conf and/or the startup file, explaining WHY stepping 
> is enabled should go a long way toward solving the "dumbass" problem.
>
>   

Yes, I know, but that requires someone to actually read the comments in
the conf files and there is always the '-x' argument that could be added
to the command line.  Adding to the fun, we use 'include' to build up
ntp.conf so we actually have three conf files that are combined.

At any rate, reading through other "step disable" problems in the
mailing list, I'm getting the impression that this option isn't really
recommended nor supported.  This, of course, begs the question of why
provide an option that is known to cause problems?  How about a comment
in the docs that states it plainly:  Don't use this option.  Yes, it
does say "The kernel time discipline is disabled with this option", but
that didn't mean anything to me when I started this work and still means
very little.  Certainly nothing I've read implies this option is
guaranteed to cause problems.  In fact, I ran for weeks with a different
processor board and different linux kernel with stepping disabled and
achieved excellent performance.

Andy




More information about the questions mailing list