Re: [ntp:questions] Seeking net time Response without Active Directory
Glenn, my native language is German, not English, so maybe I have misunderstood your original post. Martin, Danny, and Ryan, thank you for the suggestions. The punchclock software we use is pcEntry by Paychex. Below are some points that my original post overlooked. 1. We do have Windows servers; but our workstations, a combo of (a) Win2000 with no firewall, (b) WinXP with the Windows Firewall and an exception for 'File and Print Sharing,' and (c) a couple Vista boxes, are not receiving a reply to net time. It had been my understanding that to receive a reply to net time required on a domain controller, and we don't have any of them. So your puchclock boxes are all native Windows machines. On Windows 2000 or newer, w32time is installed by default. If your workstations were domain members then they would automatically detect their domain controller as time source, and synchronize to it. Since you don't have a domain, all the machines be configured by default to get their time from time.windows.com in very large intervals only. I'm not sure whether w32time is even started automatically on W2k if that machine is not a domain member. Anyway, using net time to synchronize the clock is obsolete if either w32time or NTP for Windows can be used. What may be causing some misunderstanding here is that net time commands may also be used to configure w32time, e.g. net time /setsntp:.. configures the time source to which w32time should send its (S)NTP queries. As Danny has already mentioned, installing ntpd can solve these problems. The current version also supports an unattended installation which simplifies installation with a predefined configuration on a large number of machines. 2. Our servers get the time from ntp sources, but it's my understanding that being ntp-aware isn't enough to cause a Windows workstation to receive a reply when they issue a net time query. 3. I did not know that if we enable samba on our Linux server we could have our 'net time' requests replied to. I'll try to figure out how to do that. See above, you won't need net time 4. The reason we need to continually synchronize our devices during the day to a reliable time source is because we have devices with internal clocks that drift +/- quite a bit during a workday. The people with the fast clocks wave 'goodbye' to those with the slow clocks as they head out the door; the people with the slow clocks grunt and blame the network administrator. A hundred or so workstations are involved; so various registry tweeks to increase the frequency of the Internet Time' in Control Panel 'Date and Time' would be too much of a headache. This is exactly what NTP tries to fix as good as possible under Windows. 5. If we get net time to work, then all local stations (punchclocks) should the same time, effectively locking down the time used for punches. That would be good because someone was fired here a few years ago for advancing their clock by an hour or so, punching out and leaving. We do not want to offer that temptation. If you run NTP for Windows here then the times should be synchronized to a couple of milliseconds. Of course it's a good idea disable time to be changed by the normal users, as Danny has suggested. Martin -- Martin Burnicki Meinberg Funkuhren Bad Pyrmont Germany ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] Seeking net time Response without Active Directory
On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:02:05 -0800, gcatlin wrote: We use a pc punchclock that relies on the net time command. We are a netware/linux shop and use an ntp time source, however, we do not use Active Directory. So far have been unable to make the punchclock work. Is there any way we can respond with the time when the punchclock requests net time? Any assistance would be appreciated. Glenn in NJ What version of Winblows is it? Does net help time mention /setsntp? If it does: net time /setsntp:192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.3 Choice of appropriate ntp servers is left as an exercise for the OP. -- 2008/01/04:11:56:36UTC Slackware Linux 2.4.32 up 32 days, 2:29, 6 users, load average: 2.43, 2.45, 2.30 ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] Seeking net time Response without Active Directory
Martin Burnicki wrote: Glenn, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We use a pc punchclock that relies on the net time command. We are a netware/linux shop and use an ntp time source, however, we do not use Active Directory. So far have been unable to make the punchclock work. Is there any way we can respond with the time when the punchclock requests net time? Any assistance would be appreciated. net time uses a NETBIOS call to query the time from another machine. If you are running a Linux machine then you can enable samba to reply to those requests. Martin I cannot understand why anyone would want to use a NETBIOS call on Linux to get time from another machine when it would be far easier and more supportable to just install NTP and create a configuration file to point to a number of NTP servers. Danny ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] Seeking net time Response without Active Directory
Danny, Danny Mayer wrote: Martin Burnicki wrote: Glenn, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We use a pc punchclock that relies on the net time command. We are a netware/linux shop and use an ntp time source, however, we do not use Active Directory. So far have been unable to make the punchclock work. Is there any way we can respond with the time when the punchclock requests net time? Any assistance would be appreciated. net time uses a NETBIOS call to query the time from another machine. If you are running a Linux machine then you can enable samba to reply to those requests. Martin I cannot understand why anyone would want to use a NETBIOS call on Linux to get time from another machine when it would be far easier and more supportable to just install NTP and create a configuration file to point to a number of NTP servers. If I've understood the OP correctly then he wants to synchronize some exiting devices which only support net time to _get_ the time. So he needs another device which can reply to those net time queries, and this could be a *ix machine running samba. Of course NTP would be preferable if it could be run on those clients, and of course NTP should be used to synchronize the *ix machine. Martin -- Martin Burnicki Meinberg Funkuhren Bad Pyrmont Germany ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] Seeking net time Response without Active Directory
On Jan 2, 10:02 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We use a pc punchclock that relies on the net time command. We are a netware/linux shop and use an ntp time source, however, we do not use Active Directory. So far have been unable to make the punchclock work. Is there any way we can respond with the time when the punchclock requests net time? Any assistance would be appreciated. Glenn in NJ Actually, any Windows NT4, 200, XP, or 2003 machine, should respond to a NET TIME query by default. Provided, of course, that NETBIOS is open on that machine's firewall, which it will be if there are shared folders or printers. There is no requirement for Active Directory; in fact, Active Directory domains use the NTP protocol to synchronize time, not NET TIME. So, if you have a windows file server, use that. Or pick a workstation if you don't have a Windows Seerver, and choose that as the NET TIME query destination. You can use the built in WIndows Time Service on Windows 2000 or later, or use the full ntpd for Windows to keep the machine's clock correct. ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] Seeking net time Response without Active Directory
Martin, Danny, and Ryan, thank you for the suggestions. The punchclock software we use is pcEntry by Paychex. Below are some points that my original post overlooked. 1. We do have Windows servers; but our workstations, a combo of (a) Win2000 with no firewall, (b) WinXP with the Windows Firewall and an exception for 'File and Print Sharing,' and (c) a couple Vista boxes, are not receiving a reply to net time. It had been my understanding that to receive a reply to net time required on a domain controller, and we don't have any of them. 2. Our servers get the time from ntp sources, but it's my understanding that being ntp-aware isn't enough to cause a Windows workstation to receive a reply when they issue a net time query. 3. I did not know that if we enable samba on our Linux server we could have our 'net time' requests replied to. I'll try to figure out how to do that. 4. The reason we need to continually synchronize our devices during the day to a reliable time source is because we have devices with internal clocks that drift +/- quite a bit during a workday. The people with the fast clocks wave 'goodbye' to those with the slow clocks as they head out the door; the people with the slow clocks grunt and blame the network administrator. A hundred or so workstations are involved; so various registry tweeks to increase the frequency of the Internet Time' in Control Panel 'Date and Time' would be too much of a headache. 5. If we get net time to work, then all local stations (punchclocks) should the same time, effectively locking down the time used for punches. That would be good because someone was fired here a few years ago for advancing their clock by an hour or so, punching out and leaving. We do not want to offer that temptation. Glenn in NJ ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] Seeking net time Response without Active Directory
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Martin, Danny, and Ryan, thank you for the suggestions. The punchclock software we use is pcEntry by Paychex. Below are some points that my original post overlooked. 1. We do have Windows servers; but our workstations, a combo of (a) Win2000 with no firewall, (b) WinXP with the Windows Firewall and an exception for 'File and Print Sharing,' and (c) a couple Vista boxes, are not receiving a reply to net time. It had been my understanding that to receive a reply to net time required on a domain controller, and we don't have any of them. Installing ntpd solves these problems. 2. Our servers get the time from ntp sources, but it's my understanding that being ntp-aware isn't enough to cause a Windows workstation to receive a reply when they issue a net time query. 3. I did not know that if we enable samba on our Linux server we could have our 'net time' requests replied to. I'll try to figure out how to do that. 4. The reason we need to continually synchronize our devices during the day to a reliable time source is because we have devices with internal clocks that drift +/- quite a bit during a workday. The people with the fast clocks wave 'goodbye' to those with the slow clocks as they head out the door; the people with the slow clocks grunt and blame the network administrator. A hundred or so workstations are involved; so various registry tweeks to increase the frequency of the Internet Time' in Control Panel 'Date and Time' would be too much of a headache. This is normal. The computer manufacturers put no effort into getting good clock hardware and buy the cheapest that they can find. NTP is designed to deal with this and keep the clocks disciplined so that they never drift. That's why it would be worth your while to install NTP so you don't have this problem. 5. If we get net time to work, then all local stations (punchclocks) should the same time, effectively locking down the time used for punches. That would be good because someone was fired here a few years ago for advancing their clock by an hour or so, punching out and leaving. We do not want to offer that temptation. On Windows, you can set the privileges so that noone has the privilege to change the time, except for an adminstrator (and ntpd). Danny Glenn in NJ ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
