[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

ntp configuration



Hello,

Firstly I am new to the Debian Way of doing things.

I have been having trouble configuring ntp to sync my 
clock off an intranet windows server.

In short, I reckon the ntp stuff needs more documentation especially 
about the debian specific stuff.  Is this valid?

Here is why:

Firstly I was trying to work out why the ntp server wasn't 
responding with the ntptrace command.  man ntptrace pointed 
me to the html documentation in ntp-doc.  On the manual page 
it says that there are -vdn options.  However none of the options 
are recognised except ntpupdate -n. Wouldn't it be best to alter the 
doc or program to make consistent?

Eventually I pulled out the trusty tcpdump to see what was going 
It seems that ntpdate and ntptrace were talking NTPv2 and the 
server was ignoring them prefering instead NTPv3.  I also noticed 
that inspite my alterations to /etc/ntp.conf ntp queries were going 
to a server at redhat.com.  By looking at /etc/init.d/ntpupdate I found 

that the server configuration comes from /etc/default/ntpupdate.  
Now I understand that /etc/default is an important dir tree for 
debian configuration but it would have been nice to go man ntpupdate 
and see /etc/default/ntpupdate in the FILES section of a man page 
for ntpupdate. Does anyone agree?

Anyway it turns out that the ntp stuff on my debian machine was talking 
NTPv2 and the server NTPv3 so my client was being ignored.  To update 
the clock off the windows server I had to use:

/usr/bin/ntpupdate -o 3 time.domain.com


Hopefully I haven't wasted anyones time,

Ben Marsh



Reply to: