[CentOS] NTP and hardware clock

Wed Oct 11 18:23:58 UTC 2006
Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com>

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, mike.redan at bell.ca wrote:

> 
> > The whole point of ntpdate is to synchronize the local clock with
> > another source (ie. not the local clock).
> > 
> > And I guess the main reason why they do not start ntpd if ntpdate 
> > fails, is because they have to protect other ntp clients from being 
> > poisoned by a wrong system clock upstream (because its source is 
> > unavailable).
> 
> Hrm. What does your initscript look like for ntpd? Ie which version? I
> just had a look around at some RHEL3.x and 4.x (as well as some CentOS
> ones) and none of them will refuse to start ntpd if the ntpdate run
> fails. The only thing they do when ntpdate fails is add the "-g" option,
> which will let ntpd jump the clock more than 1000s. But no matter what,
> ntpd will start.

You're correct. Then I have no idea why ntpd was not running.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]