From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Apr 14 16:41:14 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.HiWAAY.net (fly.HiWAAY.net [208.147.154.56]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EB25014C3C for ; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 16:41:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net) Received: from nospam.hiwaay.net (tnt8-216-180-14-189.dialup.HiWAAY.net [216.180.14.189]) by mail.HiWAAY.net (8.9.1a/8.9.0) with ESMTP id SAA30170; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 18:38:39 -0500 (CDT) Received: from nospam.hiwaay.net (nospam.hiwaay.net [127.0.0.1]) by nospam.hiwaay.net (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id SAA75073; Wed, 14 Apr 1999 18:25:16 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net) Message-Id: <199904142325.SAA75073@nospam.hiwaay.net> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: Jim Pazarena Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: David Kelly Subject: Re: ntpdate vs. xntpd In-reply-to: Message from Jim Pazarena of "Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:53:20 PDT." <9904141253.aa19554@dick.ccstores.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 18:25:16 -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Jim Pazarena writes: > I would like my main server to utilize ntpdate rather than xntpd for > various reasons. No problem. > > I want my other machines in my intranet to poll my main server for time > using ntpdate, but they report "No server suitable for ntpdate". > > Do I have to enable some ntp daemon on my server? Even if I enable the > xntpd daemon, the other machines still report the not suitable message. > > What do I need to do? Heck, I'd continue to run xntpd, even if the excuse against it is that you are doing dialup networking. If you are online for an hour xntpd can get a good reference calibration of your clock and keep it running pretty good for the next 23 hours. When xntpd is no longer able to connect to its upstream sources it quits providing data for the downstream clients. That could be a problem. Or maybe not. An alternative to xntpd and family is timed(1). With timed hosts vote among themselves for a master among those running with the -M option, and average all the timed host's clocks for a best guess. If you run timed on all your systems, but add the -M and -F options to the one that periodically runs ntpdate, then I think you may have your solution. % man timed says: One way to synchronize a group of machines is to use an NTP daemon to synchronize the clock of one machine to a distant standard or a radio re- ceiver and -F hostname to tell its timed daemon to trust only itself. xntpd can operate in the same way as timed, but unlike timed xntpd can connect thru routers. The problem with xntpd is that it has so many features its hard to figure out how to config it. I don't know how to make xntpd work like timed, have only seen hints in the man pages. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message