Re: ntpd

[Andrew Dixon <andrew.dixon@seranoa.com>]

Peter Palmreuther wrote:
> 
> Hello Andrew,
> 
> On Thursday, September 27, 2001 at 4:44:34 PM,
> you wrote (at least in part):
> 
> > Hi All,
> > I'm trying to run ntpd here to both set the clock and then keep it
> > synchronized with our ntp server.  My problem is that ntpd seems to be
> > trying to slew the clock instead of setting it.  Here is an example:
> 
> That's exactly how ntpd works. ntpdate sets the time 'instantly' ntpd tries to
> compress your clock 's running faster/slower than 1s/s.
> So you should start ntpd _after_ setting the correct time via ntpdate in your
> init.d-scripts.

>From the ntpd(1) man page:
       -x     Ordinarily,  if the time is to be adjusted more than 128
ms,
              it is stepped, not gradually slewed.  This option forces
the
              time  to  be slewed in all cases.  Note: Since the slew
rate
              is limited to 0.5 ms/s, each second of  adjustment 
requires
              an  amortization  interval of 2000 s.  Thus an adjustment
of
              many seconds can take hours or days to amortize.

So the default operation of ntpd should be to _step_ and not _slew_ the
clock on a big offset.

Could someone with ntpd working "properly" test this out and see what
actually happens?

thanks,
Andy