[vox-tech] I'm also having ntp problems :-(

[vox-tech@lists.lugod.org]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 06:03:56PM -0700, Ryan wrote:
> I just set up ntpd on my firewall, and am trying to use it as a ntp relay to 
> sync my local lan to.
[...]
> The port's open and it will tell me about it's peers when i connect to it 
> with ntpq...

  For a few minutes after restarting the ntpd it will tell clients not 
to synchronize off of itself.  You may have to wait (about 5 mins) for
the server to get itself happy.

> [root@bob root]# ntpq -c peers nat
>      remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
> ==============================================================================
>  LOCAL(0)        LOCAL(0)        10 l    -   64  377    0.000    0.000   0.000
> *time.nist.gov   .ACTS.           1 u    -   64  377   66.324   11.718   1.090
> +step.mother.com ntp1.usno.navy.  2 u   14   64  377   26.117   -0.109   0.941
                                   ^^ stratum column

  From what I understand you have the "nat" machine synchronizing off of three
sources, itself and two remote time servers, it has picked time.nist.gov to
use as it's reference (probably because it has a lower stratum level).
When I last played around with ntp clients I found that regardless of
how close different sources are from localtime, the clients would first
sort by stratum, then all the machines with the lowest stratum would
be selected for "closest to me".

  You don't have a reliable local time source so you shouldn't sync against 
the local machine, I've seen ntp servers that have themselves in their peers
list rule out the other servers (because of network connections), then 
go around reporting themselves as stratum 0 machines, which can totally 
other clients using that machine's clock (because of the block above).

  I would recommend you drop localhost from your configuration then pick 
a series of time servers which are the same stratum.

> [root@bob root]# ntpdate nat
> 24 Apr 18:02:18 ntpdate[3482]: no server suitable for synchronization found

  If you add -q it will show you the results from each machines it tried,
and which one it would pick.  A -d to see what it's doing, in the
output look for a line like this:
# stratum 16, precision -17, leap 11, trust 000
  When a machine reports itself at stratum 16, it is basically saying
don't trust me, I don't think I'm synchronized against anything.

  If you try this stuff and are still having problems post some more 
details.

    Later,
      Mike