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Date:      Wed, 14 Apr 1999 18:25:16 -0500
From:      David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
To:        Jim Pazarena <paz@ccstores.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: ntpdate vs. xntpd 
Message-ID:  <199904142325.SAA75073@nospam.hiwaay.net>
In-Reply-To: Message from Jim Pazarena <paz@ccstores.com>  of "Wed, 14 Apr 1999 12:53:20 PDT." <9904141253.aa19554@dick.ccstores.com> 

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Jim Pazarena writes:
> I would like my main server to utilize ntpdate rather than xntpd for
> various reasons. No problem.
> 
> I want my other machines in my intranet to poll my main server for time
> using ntpdate, but they report "No server suitable for ntpdate".
> 
> Do I have to enable some ntp daemon on my server? Even if I enable the
> xntpd daemon, the other machines still report the not suitable message.
> 
> What do I need to do?

Heck, I'd continue to run xntpd, even if the excuse against it is that 
you are doing dialup networking. If you are online for an hour xntpd 
can get a good reference calibration of your clock and keep it running 
pretty good for the next 23 hours.

When xntpd is no longer able to connect to its upstream sources it 
quits providing data for the downstream clients. That could be a 
problem. Or maybe not.

An alternative to xntpd and family is timed(1). With timed hosts vote
among themselves for a master among those running with the -M option,
and average all the timed host's clocks for a best guess. If you run
timed on all your systems, but add the -M and -F options to the one that
periodically runs ntpdate, then I think you may have your solution.

% man timed says:

     One way to synchronize a group of machines is to use an NTP daemon to
     synchronize the clock of one machine to a distant standard or a radio re-
     ceiver and -F hostname to tell its timed daemon to trust only itself.

xntpd can operate in the same way as timed, but unlike timed xntpd can
connect thru routers. The problem with xntpd is that it has so many
features its hard to figure out how to config it. I don't know how to
make xntpd work like timed, have only seen hints in the man pages.


--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.




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