Stroller wrote: > Hi there, > > I just logged into one of my machines that has recently been powered > down for a few days - not a terribly common occurrence with my servers > - to find a date of January 30th showing. > > I used to run ntp-client, but AIUI adding this to the default runlevel > only sets the clock once at boot up. Of course the problem with that > is that the computer's clock can become inaccurate if the spring > tension is weak, as is obviously the case in my older PCs. > > So a while back I changed /etc/runlevels/default so that ntpd is > started instead. > > I understood that ntpd was not only a server for my LAN (a facility I > don't use) but that it would also periodically check the time with > upstream servers & keep the machine's clock in constant sync. > > So when I found the clock to be a week out of date I checked that ntpd > appeared to be running (it was) and restarted it. The date remained > the same. Stopping ntpd & starting ntp-client corrected the date > immediately. > > Before I do any investigation, can someone tell me if my understanding > so far is correct? Is ntpd supposed to keep the machine's clock in > constant sync, or is it only (say) a server to offer the date to > clients? (depending upon the clock being set correctly by other means) > I thought I had configured ntpd with upstream servers separately from > ntp-client. > > Stroller. > >
I use ntpd here as well. Ntpd does not set it immediately like other commands do. From my understanding ntpd compares its time to a server then gradually adjusts the clock by speeding up or slowing down the clock. It takes a while to do this. If your clock is a long ways off then it will take longer. I'm not sure if this is still true but I read that if it is way off, several days or longer I would assume, it will require you to adjust it manually or you could set it with ntpdate which will set it instantly from one of the time servers. In this case, set the clock then restart ntpd. Hope that helps. Dale :-) :-)
