topic Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP in Operating System - OpenVMS

Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:10:43 GMT

We have about 100 VMS nodes of which 4 are DTSS local servers and of which 2 are connected to a Hopf clock and thus are global servers.

We want to remove the clocks and use NTP to get the time.

What do I need to do to continue using DTSS but get the correct time using NTP ?

Wim

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:44:53 GMT

This seems it.

http://www.sysworks.com.au/disk$axpdocjun022/network/dcntp73/dn_dtsm1.p99.bkb

Anyone using this dtss$ntp_provider.c ?

WIm

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Volker Halle — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:48:50 GMT

Wim,

one of our customers uses DTSS$NTP_PROVIDER on some of their DTSS servers and then distributes the time using DTSS.

Volker.

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:51:27 GMT

Volker,

Did they need to modify it ? Bugs/pitfalls ?

Wim

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Volker Halle — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:57:40 GMT

Wim,

AFAIK, they used the version from

http://antinode.org/dec/sw/dtss_ntp.html

Try it on a test system first...

Volker.

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Heinz W Genhart — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:06:21 GMT

Hi Wim

we are using dtss$provider_ntp.exe since at least two years. The machines running this image get the time from ntp and distribute this time via DTSS to our OpenVMS Environment. We never had problems with it until now.

Regards

Geni

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:18:28 GMT

Im' on 7.3. Where do I get dtss$provider.h ?

Wim

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Volker Halle — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:23:39 GMT

Wim,

try SYS$COMMON:[SYSHLP.EXAMPLES.DTSS]DTSS$PROVIDER.H

Did you install/configure DECnet-Plus to include DTSS server ?

Volker.

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:30:03 GMT

Yes DTSS is configured. But no .h file.

Wim

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:32:12 GMT

Don't know why but found the files on 1 system.

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Volker Halle — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:35:22 GMT

Wim,

as far as I remember, the DTSS$PROVIDER_NTP examples had been delivered with 'some' DECnet-OSI patch in the past - so it might depend on your patch history, whether you have this file(s) or not.

Volker.

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Hoff — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:46:43 GMT

The DTSS$NTP_PROVIDER.C provider module is available on older releases (and was buggy), the module was removed for a while, and then (was fixed and) added back in within current releases; with V7.3 and later.

Unless you're specifically using DECdts (DTSS) clerks and servers for the distribution of time values, I'd suggest disabling it and switching to NTP -- other than the distribution of the time values, what DECdts once provided is now part of base OpenVMS, with V7.3 and later. The DECdts APIs and the DST switch-over stuff (qv: AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV), for instance, are now all in base OpenVMS V7.3 and later.

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Steven Schweda — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:08:40 GMT

> Where do I get dtss$provider.h ?

There's also a copy on my server, next to all
the other files, but I failed to provide a
link to it.

http://antinode.org/ftp/dtss_ntp/

> I'd suggest disabling it and switching to
> NTP [...]

I keep meaning to do that someday...

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Heinz W Genhart — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:58:50 GMT

Hi Wim

We have a test-, an integration- and a production environment. On the integration- and production systems we are still using DTSS for synchronizing the time.

The test systems have to participate the year end test. Involved in this year end tests are also linux, sun solaris, hp ux and nt systems. The year end test starts in October and ends in mid December. During this time, we test the behaviour of our applications and we simulate the time starting in October and ending end of February. Thats why we have to adjust the time on those test systems several times, what means we are doing jumps sometimes one day, sometimes one week to the future. It was easier to use a test NTP server too for those systems, because every system understands NTP and we should not have time differences of more than 5-10 s on the whole test environment. Our experience with NTP is very good.

Now we have already moved, or will still move all of our systems into a secured zone, which is only accessible over firewalls. This means we have to change the IP addresses of all those machines we move. Because we have anyway to touch each system, we decided to move to NTP time synchronization on all of our systems.
The short meaning of this long story: We trust in NTP, because of the good experience with NTP.

Regards

Geni

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Kjell Carlsson — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:38:33 GMT

I don't see any need for special software. I have configured a local DTSS server to use NTP to fetch internet time. When this server was able to act as a local server supporting both DTSS and NTP. But now we have left DTSS and uses only NTP.

KjellC

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:43:15 GMT

Kjell,

What do you mean ? Without the provider program ? How ?

Wim

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

berlioz — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 03:19:59 GMT

Just have a look at mike ford answer in the following link :

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=752540

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 03:28:32 GMT

That's WITH the provider program. We already had that subject.

Wim

Re: Replace DTSS clock by NTP

Kjell Carlsson — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 02:19:34 GMT

Sorry, I don't exactly remember the set up. But I think one Alpha OpenVMS 7.1 was set up to act as a local DTSS server. Synchronization from other DTSS servers was prevented. Then I configured NTP to receive global time. Use peer in the *ntp*.conf file. After that other VMS-nodes could synch both via DTSS or NTP and Windows-nodes could synch via NTP.