HP Time Synchronization and USNO

[Geetha Alagappan]

Does anyone know how to sync an HP-UX (11.0)
Clock with the US Navel Observatory Master Clocks? HP doesn't have rdate.

Thanks
Alice

[CHRIS_ANORUO]

Have you tried NTP?

[Rick Garland]

The use of ntp is a simple way to go. Setup the /etc/ntp.conf file and you can point to many servers for time sync.

There is a FAQ at University Delaware and it lists the various stratum 1 servers that can be used.

Do a search for the full URL address as there have been many posts concerning this subject.

[Joel Shank]

We use ntp and the Naval Observatory time. We have one server which gets the time from USNO and all our other servers sync off this one, even our NT servers.

In your /etc/ntp.conf file, put in this line:
server 192.5.41.40

Have your other servers use this server as its timekeepper and you're all set. We've been using this for several years without any problems.

Hope this helps
JLS

[Tim Malnati]

Setting up ntp on HPUX using SAM is a piece of cake. The NTP standard recommends at least two sources although the servers at USNO are probably the most stable around and nobody knows how to keep time better than they do. Is my previous US Navy bias showing through? Their server addresses are: tick.usno.navy.mil (192.5.41.40) and tock.usno.navy.mil (192.5.41.41). In actuality, there are probably many stratum 1 and 2 servers much closer to you. A listing is at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1.htm and http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock2.htm

[Geetha Alagappan]

Thanks all your answers helped.
Since I haven't used NTP before, my next question is
once I have one server getting the time from USNO,
how do I set up my other servers to sync to that one server.

Thanks

[Rick Garland]

If your environment permits:

You would have two servers going to get the time. These two servers can function as your stratum 2 servers. You can point these two servers to look in two different places.

All of your other servers look to the two servers you have configured. In this way, if one server goes down, you are still sync'ing with the other server.

This is a simply setup I listed above. The goal would be to have redundant time servers that your servers can look to and sync.

With the config listed above, the single point of failure would be the network.

There are numerous other configs you can do as well.

[Bruce Regittko_1]

Hi,

If you need more information on NTP, see if you can find the manual from HP's System and Network Administration II course. There is a chapter devoted to NTP.

Also, a search for NTP at www.docs.hp.com turned up a chapter in the HTML book Installing and Administering Internet Services. This chapter looks pretty comprehensive.

--Bruce