[ntp:questions] NTP on LAN

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Thu Sep 18 17:20:34 UTC 2008


05IT042 wrote:
> I'm totally new to NTP. Please excuse any noob questions. What I want
> is this...
> 
> I have 2 computers connected on the same lan. I want one of them to be
> set up as a NTP server and the other to be setup as a NTP client. This
> is my initial goal. I tried giving the ip address of the server in the
> client's /etc/ntp.conf file and i gave localhost(127.0.0.1) in the
> servers /etc/ntp.conf file. After this how do i go about checking if
> they're even getting synchronized or anything at all? Also some links
> for learning more would also be appreciated.
> OS: Ubuntu Hardy Heron on both server and client.
> Thanks in advance.

Are you trying to synchronize these computers with each other?  Or are 
you trying to synchronize them to an external server or clock?

If you don't really care what time it is but just want all the machines 
to have the SAME time, there is something called "orphan mode" which 
will allow you to do that.  (I've never used it or wanted to!)

The more conventional way to use NTP is to synchronize to a group of 
external servers or to a hardware reference clock; e.g. a GPS timing 
receiver or a WWV/WWVH/WWVB/CHU/JJY/etc receiver. (These are all 
shortwave radio staions operated bye the US Government, the Canadian 
government, or the Japanese government.  Other countries operate such 
time broadcasts but I'm not familiar with the details.

There are lists of Stratum 1 and Stratum 2 servers at 
http://www.ntp.org/ where you will also find links to documentation, 
source code, and other useful stuff.




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