Re: NIST time

["Gary Hennigan" <glhenni@sandia.gov>]

"Craig Dickson" <crdic@yahoo.com> writes:
> Paul E Condon wrote:
> 
> > I want to automate the time/date setting on my computer( Potato ).
> > I suppose there is a program that accesses NIST time server and
> > allows me to update.
> > 
> > What is the name of the debian package to do this?
> 
> I use the ntpdate client, but there is a full ntp server (called ntp) as
> well if you want to maintain your entire LAN's collective clock from one
> machine.

You can have the complete NTP suite by installing the Debian packages:

        ntpdate
        ntp-simple
        ntp

The ntpdate package contains the ntpdate utility that you can use from
the command line, or in a crontab entry, to update your clock
periodically from a server given on the command line.

The ntp-simple package contains the ntp daemon, ntpd, that will, among
other things, continuously keep your clock up to date by polling
servers specified in your ntp.conf file. You can also set up the
daemon to do as Craig suggested and have it act as a server for your
own LAN as well.

The ntp package contains supporting utilities for NTP.

One thing to keep in mind is that it's probably best to find an NTP
server near you rather than go directly to a NIST server. The reasons
are twofold: 1) To keep the NIST server from becoming too overloaded
2) Less network delay means better synchronization of your clock
(probably not significant to a simple workstation, but still...).

In a lot of networks the router/gateway is configured as an NTP
server. For example, on my @home connection I sync via NTP to the
default gateway.

Gary