Major Clock Drift

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 03:47:17PM -0400, Josh Pollak wrote:
> 
> On Aug 26, 2004, at 3:40 PM, dsr at tao.merseine.nu wrote:
> >>Anyway, what could be the cause of my drifting clock? Could I have
> >>something setup wrong, or is my computer's hardware somehow going?
> >
> >Run your ntpdate at boot time, then run ntpd forever after.
> 
> Isn't ntpd the ntp server? I don't want my workstation being an ntp 
> server all the time... Maybe I'm confused about how ntpd works.

You're confused about how ntpd works.

ntpdate is a trivial ntp implementation: it gets one reading,
then exits. 

ntpd is a long-running daemon. It synchronizes with several
other ntpd-running machines, and keeps them all together. More
attention is paid to machines with a lower stratum number: a
stratum-1 machine is presumed to have "real" knowledge of the
time through GPS or an atomic clock or a radio clock. 

"being an ntp server" as you think of it is controlled by the
acls in the ntpd.conf. Set it up so that it doesn't allow random
IPs to connect, and you're fine.

-dsr-