move the time ahead slowly

[Gord Moore]

We have NTP running on several servers, but because of security concerns we can't reach an outside timeserver. So one computer is set up as an "Undisciplined Local Clock". It works well enough, but that server is now several minutes slow (and thus all the servers are several minutes slow). I want to move the time ahead on that server and have NTP pick up the time on the other servers.

The "date" command has an option of "-a sss.fff" which will "Slowly adjust the time by sss.fff seconds" (seconds and fraction of seconds). Sound good to me, but I wonder how slowly is slowly?

Will it go slow enough that the NTP requests won't see a large jump from the server and shut down (when they see a difference of over 1000 seconds, I think)?

Thanks.

[Steven E. Protter]

ntp is built to up time discrepencies just the way you want it to. It will not jump the time. To catch up when slow it runs the clock a wee bit faster until it cathes up. Same thing if its ahead.

It can take some time for the clock to synch.

You should test your internal server. It may not be Unix compliant.

ntpq -p ip_address_of_time_server

ntpq -p 192.168.0.1 for example.

Check your ntp.conf file for minimal documentation and http://www.ntp.org for lots of documentation.

SEP
At O'Hare waiting for flight to Detroit then Amsterdam

[John Kittel · Accepted solution]

just out of curiosity I searched the forums. There was another thread, similar topic, a couple answers address your concern...

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=218239