Replace DTSS clock by NTP

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

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

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

This seems it.

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

Anyone using this dtss$ntp_provider.c ?

WIm

[Volker Halle]

Wim,

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

Volker.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Volker,

Did they need to modify it ? Bugs/pitfalls ?

Wim

[Volker Halle]

Wim,

AFAIK, they used the version from

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

Try it on a test system first...

Volker.

[Heinz W Genhart]

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

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

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

Wim

[Volker Halle]

Wim,

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

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

Volker.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Yes DTSS is configured. But no .h file.

Wim

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

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

[Volker Halle]

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.

[Hoff]

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.

[Steven Schweda]

> 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...

[Heinz W Genhart]

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

[Kjell Carlsson]

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

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Kjell,

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

Wim

[berlioz]

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

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

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

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

Wim

[Kjell Carlsson]

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.