[ntp:questions] Popcorn on prefer takes out system clock

A C agcarver+ntp at acarver.net
Wed Mar 7 21:03:42 UTC 2012


On 3/6/2012 20:34, Dave Hart wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 01:32,<Null at blacklist.anitech-systems.invalid>  wrote:
>> Dave Hart wrote:
>>> A C<agcarver+ntp at acarver.net>  wrote:
>>>> 130.207.165.28 944d 8d popcorn 2147483647.997598 s
>>>
>>> I assume you mean in the local ntpd log on your sparc box
>>>   referring to the IP address that used to be marked prefer.
>>> I realize not everyone is a programmer, but the number
>>>   above jumped out at me as suspiciously round in hex
>>>   and binary.  Sure enough, round it to whole seconds
>>>   and you have 2^31 or 0x80000000.  Incredible coincidence?
>>
>> -0.002402 ?
>
> Nope.  NTP's 32:32 l_fp is used for both unsigned timestamps and
> signed differences between timestamps (intervals or offsets).  In both
> cases the fractional part is unsigned and positive.  For offsets, the
> integer part is signed, so -0.002402 would be -1 seconds plus
> 0.997598, or in hex 0xffffffff.0xf.......  In this case we have an
> unambiguously positive value 0x7fffffff.0xf....... or just over +68
> years.

Interestingly the same remote server just popcorned again but this time 
the number was still huge though less than a full overflow:


130.207.165.28 901d 8d popcorn 202238.338413 s

And another popcorned recently, too, but it was much more sane:

208.53.158.34 933d 8d popcorn 0.039998 s


So it looks like that one remote server just has problems but nothing 
wrong with my own system other than it not liking exceptionally large 
popcorn values from the prefer peer.

If the ATOM driver would actually run without a prefer and allow the 
normal clock selection process to choose then this would probably not be 
an issue.


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