ntp is to do with syncing time, there are two ways to use it, everynow and then you can run: $ntpdate timeserver which will connect to the specified timeserver and sync your system time with that of the timeserver, the other way is to run ntp or its earlier incarnation xntp as a daemon, this will compare the timekeeping of your system with that of a specified timeserver(s) and calculate how slow or fast your system is, your system will then use this 'drift' factor to adjust how it keeps time, because the latter can take quite a while to bring a machine's time into sync most systems running ntp as a daemon will also run ntpdate on bootup. any machine running (x)ntp as a daemon to sync loacl time can alos be used a timeserver by other machines, a much better explanation of all this can be found here: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/
as to your problem the file /etc/ntp/step-tickers is one of the files that ntp can use, why its non-presence should cause your 'upgrade' to fail i don't know but perhaps if you uninstalled ntp first then tried an upgrade you might have better luck, it's possible that you have a misconfigured ntp setup, the upgrade may be detecting that your system is trying to use ntp and presenting that to you in the summary you mention, another tack might be to click on the timesetting option and re-choosing the necessary option, iirc that is the timezone selection is it not? followed by 'do you want to use ntp'? it is completely optional whether to run ntp in either of its guises, of course those without an 'always-on' connection can only benefit at those time they are on line, to remove from an 8.2 system - assuming it was installed via rpm, run (as root): #rpm -e ntp hope this helps bascule On Thursday 11 July 2002 9:19 pm, you wrote: > Last night I somehow lost my printer setup. I booted off the install cd to > reinstall it. When the install got to the summary showing the keyboard, > moust, printer, and time setting, I clicked ok. I then got an error: > > output in file /mnt/etc/ntp/step-tickers failed. no such file are > directory. > > The kind person who helped me setup my dsl said it has to do with syncing > time. I didn't have this when I upgraded from 8.1 to 8.2. Is this > necessary? It doesn't seem to be since it caused me to have to hit the > reset switch to reload mandrake, and if its not necessary how do I remove > it? > > Thanks > Chris > > ------------------------------------------------------- -- 'It's easy to hold everything in common when no one's got anything.' (Maskerade)
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