On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 00:51, N. Thomas wrote: > * Sonny Kupka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-12-21 10:46:12 -0600]: > > I have ntpdate installed on woody.. and it's not automagically keeping my > > system in sync.. > > Contrary to what you may have heard, ntpdate does not keep your system > clock synced. Also ignore the foolish recommendations to run ntpdate > from a cron job. > > ntpdate works like date(1), but it sets your clock's time to that of an > ntp server (or servers) instead of having it specified by you. > > If you want to keep your clock in sync use ntpd -- that's what it was > designed for. It uses many sophisticated algorithms and statistical > methods to accomplish this. After some time, it can even figure out how > "bad" your system clock is (i.e. its drift) and compensate for it, even > if your network connection goes out. > > Unfortunately, some people, instead of taking the time to read the ntp > documentation and writing a proper ntp.conf file, took the easy route > and started running ntpdate from cron. > > This caused two problems, firstly it did not keep very good time: > immediately after you called ntpdate, your clock would begin to drift > again. And more importantly, every hour or so, the ntp servers were > being affected by a "thunderclap" effect, the result of everybody > putting: > > 0 * * * * /usr/local/bin/ntpdate > > or something similar into their crontab files. The ntp daemon does not > do this as it randomizes the time it waits between queries. > > For this reason, Dr. Mills (ntp author) has deprecated ntpdate, and > indeed, he will be removing it completely from a future release. > > hth, > thomas
Thank you very much for this information. I was one of the people using ntpdate in a cron job, although it was not because I was lazy, all my servers have ntpd, I only used ntpdate on clients. >From now, I'll only run ntpd on all my clients (and once again, I took the time reading the ntpd documentation) and not ntpdate anymore. Thanks. Antoine -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]