NTP question

[Pippo_9]

Good evening experts,

argument is NTP (Network Time Protocol).
Configuration: a Windows 2000 system which gets time by internet and it is a NTP server for some HP-UX clients. Problem is about 2 HP-UX clients, sometimes they seems to lost synchronization and a big delay results bewteen NTP server and these 2 NTP clients. Last time the stop/start of xntpd solved the problem but I think is better to verify something in order to avoid the unknown reason of the problem.
About this I notices a strange thing by ntpq -p output:

NTP server: 10.16.244.144


NTP client 1:
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset disp
==============================================================================
#10.16.244.144 192.5.41.209 2 u 21 128 377 2.08 0.143 0.15





NTP client 2:
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset disp
==============================================================================
#10.16.244.144 192.5.41.209 2 u 101 128 377 1.92 2.946 5.26


The strange thing is # sign in front of 10.16.244.144 and I already know from man ntpq:

# selected for synchronization but distance exceeds maximum;

But I have some doubts that I cannot find explainations: how long is the max distance possible? I think the distance here is between the client and server, is it right?

Have anybody experiences about "#" sign by ntpq -p output?

Thanks a lot in advance for all replies!

Best regards,
Ettore

[Steven E. Protter]

Windows 2000 standard time server will sometimes not give valid replies to the ntpq -q command.

That is the case in our shop. In spite of this, the hp-9000 servers seem to time synch just fine. HP notes that this solution is not supported.

Dr. David Mills has timer server software for windows 2000 that is unix compliant.

Here is a link.
http://developer.novell.com/research/appnotes/1999/july/03/02.htm
http://www.ntp.org/documentation.html



SEP

[Pete Randall]

Ettore,

The "#" indicates "selected for synchronization but distance exceeds maximum". Hopefully, you should have some other entries preceded by a "*".


Pete

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Eltore,

Try some more clock in the ntp.conf file and see if you find one where your server ntpq output shows a "*" in front of the clock.

Here is a sample list of some stratum 1 clocks.

http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.html

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Pippo_9]

Other info:
there aren't "*" in ntpq -p, just that I posted before.
/etc/ntp.conf only contains a row:

server 10.16.244.144