[Gllug] xntp strangeness

[Alain Williams]

On Sun, Sep 07, 2003 at 08:45:22PM +0100, Dylan wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been trying to get ntp to work properly over my local network. I have a 
> server which picks up the time from an external public second strata time 
> server at boot. All the client boxes then pick up time from the local server 
> when they boot. So far so good.
> 
> Tonight, I wanted to shift the local time server onto my gateway machine, 
> because it seems more logical to have it there than on an internal server. 
> Anyway, I have failed miserably....
> 
> I am hitting a wall which has taken me a couple of hours to identify:
> 
> The server picks up the time with no problem. And before today there were no 
> problems internally picking up the time from the local server. I changed the 
> server specification on the gateway to point to the external source and 
> issued an rcxntpd restart (I'm using SuSE8.2, btw) and all was fine. Then 
> changed the config on the former server to point at the gateway instead of 
> the external source. An rcxntpd restart on the server led to a failure to 
> pick up the time from the gateway.
> 
> Much playing later had led me to the following state: If the machine serving 
> local time is rebooted, all clients can pick up the time from that server, 
> but if the server undergoes an rcxntpd restart then the clients can no longer 
> pick up the time.

For a long time I had problems where NTP would sometimes work and sometimes it would not.

I eventually realised that NTP will refuse to change the time if it differs from the
reference by more than 20 minutes -- unless you give it some magic option (which some
distros do when the machine boots).

-- 
Alain Williams

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