From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 2 22:43:22 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC16D16A4CE for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 22:43:22 +0000 (GMT) Received: from sdf.lonestar.org (mx.freeshell.org [192.94.73.21]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3242B43D46 for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 22:43:22 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from lukas@sdf.lonestar.org) Received: from sdf.lonestar.org (IDENT:lukas@norge.freeshell.org [192.94.73.3]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.13.1/8.12.10) with ESMTP id j22MhEB3022485; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 22:43:14 GMT Received: (from lukas@localhost) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.13.1/8.12.8/Submit) id j22MhEQT010132; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 14:43:14 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 14:43:14 -0800 (PST) From: Luke X-X-Sender: lukas@norge.freeshell.org To: Tom Trelvik In-Reply-To: <42262D74.3050907@cwru.edu> Message-ID: References: <20050302102908.GF30896@alzatex.com> <42262D74.3050907@cwru.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Received mail timestamp is off by 7 hours X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: LukeD@pobox.com List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 22:43:23 -0000 >> 1) NTP is difficult to configure. I've done it, but it wasn't trivial. > > It's always seemed rather straightforward to me, what in particular > gave you trouble, perhaps we could help? Well, there seemed to be two different services. One was something that would run only on boot. The other was a daemon. The daemon seemed more useful, especially for a system that shouldn't be rebooted often, but it had a wide variety of configuration options. The NTP server that I found to connect to insisted that I not connect to it more frequently than X, and X was a longer time interval than was defined in the default setup, so I had to mess around with it. It's been almost a year since I tried to set this up, so I don't remember anything more specific than that. If the NTP server I was using had been a bit more permissive, I probably could've used the default configuration without changes. >> 2) Finding an NTP server willing to accept traffic from the public isn't >> easy either. For me it involved a scavenger hunt through out-of-date >> websites and a lot of failed attempts. > > time.nist.gov is public, and has it's own atomic clock. A google > search for "public ntp servers" also found this: http://www.pool.ntp.org/ Thanks for the tip! I remember seeing www.pool.ntp.org before, but I misunderstood what it was for. >> 3) If your clock tends to run noticably fast or slow, constant NTP >> corrections tend to do more harm than good, at least in my experience. It >> got to where I couldn't even run a buildworld because NTP kept tinkering >> with the clock in the middle of the process. > > That suggests larger problems on your system, to me, but I dunno. You're right. This machine did have serious problems. The clock was wild. Using the NTP daemon to try to correct it just aggravated the situation because calibration was just about impossible.