On Sun, May 08, 2011 at 06:45:01AM -0400, Jerry wrote:
> On Sun, 8 May 2011 11:07:04 +0100 (BST)
> Spyros Tsiolis <sts...@yahoo.co.uk> articulated:
>
> > So what you people say is :
> >
> > 1. Run "ntpdate" during startup only once
> > 2. After that, keep time with ntpd
>
> As I posted earlier using the technique I showed, on a FreeBSD system,
> there would be absolutely no reason to do so; however, I cannot vouch
> for that on other systems.
Right. As for running ntpdate, the years have passed and the debian manual now
says:
-g Normally, ntpd exits with a message to the system log if the
offset exceeds the panic threshold, which is 1000
s by default. This option allows the time to be set to any value
without restriction; however, this can happen
only once. If the threshold is exceeded after that, ntpd will
exit with a message to the system log. This
option can be used with the -q and -x options.
-q Exit the ntpd just after the first time the clock is set. This
behavior mimics that of the ntpdate program,
which is to be retired.
So, ntpdate is to be retired. In boot scripts either simply run
ntpd -g
or, probably better:
ntpd -gqx
ntpd
In FreeBSD, AFAICS, setting
ntpd_enable="YES" # Start time server
ntpd_sync_on_start="YES" # Synchronize on start
in /etc/rc.d corresponds to the second of the two, at least as
of FreeBSD 6.4, since before 6.4 the -x was apparently missing,
which would not correct big offsets, see:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-bugs/2009-March/034439.html
