Am 31.10.2010 19:04, schrieb Stan Hoeppner:
Was ntpd really the problem or were you missing a loopback interface?
What is the output of 'cat /etc/network/interfaces'?  Do you see:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

or something similar?

Im Sorry, loopback interface was installed properly and is in /etc/network/interfaces indeed. And it really was something around the ntp service. After purging both ntp and ntpdate I rebooted the system.
And voila, the timed out error was gone.
ntpd and ntpdate serve two different functions, well, actually the same
function but in two different ways.  Most Linux distros have both
installed automatically.  Removing ntpdate won't fix a config problem
with ntpd.  ntpdate is an interactive (command line) utility.  It can be
setup to run via cron once or twice a day to sync the time to an ntp
server instead of using ntpd.  Best practices calls for ntpd however,
and recommends against using cron'd ntpdate.  The latter puts too much
stress on the world's ntp servers when everyone does it that way, since
most OPs that did so scheduled syncs at noon and midnight.  So the ntp
servers would get flooded with millions of requests in a period of a few
seconds, twice a day--not good.

You really, really need accurate time on a mail server, which means you
should have ntpd configured properly and running.  On most Linux distros
today all you have to do is install the package and the install script
takes care of the rest.  You may need to configure your pool servers
manually.  For you those should probably be:

0.de.pool.ntp.org
1.de.pool.ntp.org

Just for fun, what is the complete output of (executed on the mail
server shell of course):

ntpdate -q 0.de.pool.ntp.org

This will make a query without changing the local machine time.  It will
tell us the current error of your clock.

I just installed ntpdate for you ;) again and this is the output:

# ntpdate -q 0.de.pool.ntp.org
server 188.40.77.71, stratum 2, offset 0.000922, delay 0.03386
server 89.238.71.130, stratum 2, offset -0.004381, delay 0.04456
server 131.234.137.24, stratum 1, offset -0.003588, delay 0.03430
31 Oct 19:33:46 ntpdate[1412]: adjust time server 131.234.137.24 offset -0.003588 sec

But actually, my first two ntp servers are some local ones. They are run by another SystemOperator and do their job fine.


After installing ntpdate, the error "Unexpected first line <localhost: timed out, nothing received>" reoccured.
Purgin it again, removed it...

Here is another output (without ntpdate installed):
# ntpq -p
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
==============================================================================
+wrzx03.rz.uni-w 131.188.3.220 2 u 14 64 1 0.551 0.038 0.028 +wrz1003.rz.uni- 131.188.3.220 2 u 17 64 1 0.542 0.042 0.018 interactive21.d 192.53.103.104 2 u 23 64 1 16.345 -9.671 0.002 formularfetisch 160.45.10.8 2 u 25 64 1 8.340 -1.062 0.002 valiant.die-com 192.53.103.103 2 u 26 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.002 *netz.smurf.nori 131.234.137.24 2 u 11 64 1 7.356 -5.412 0.241 zit-net2.uni-pa .DCF. 1 u 26 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.002


To sum it up:
Config with packet ntp installed runs properly and I still think that ntpdate throws the errors. Even system Startup is faster without it. Its 60seconds vs ~18seconds on rc2.d startuptime.


If I aint wrong, my system time is still accurate.
And the problem is solved, or did I miss something?


Greetings,
Christopher Metter

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