[CentOS] Date drift and ntpd

[Simon Billis]

Jason Pyeron sent a missive on 2010-08-12:

> We have a local time server and all of our machines are pointed at it
> for the time.
> 
> How can the clock drift by a day and a half?
> 
> [root at devserver21 ~]# date
> Fri Aug 13 14:43:29 EDT 2010
> [root at devserver21 ~]# rdate -s 192.168.1.67
> [root at devserver21 ~]# date
> Thu Aug 12 07:02:39 EDT 2010
> [root at devserver21 ~]# cat /etc/ntp.conf | grep -v ^# | grep -v ^$
> restrict default nomodify notrap noquery restrict 127.0.0.1 server
> 192.168.1.67 server 192.168.1.66 server 192.168.1.65
> server  127.127.1.0     # local clock
> fudge   127.127.1.0 stratum 10
> driftfile /var/lib/ntp/drift
> broadcastdelay  0.008
> keys            /etc/ntp/keys
> 
>

Hi,

It is unlikely that the machine in question drifted forward in time if ntpd
was running. Have a look at the logs /var/log/messages it should contain the
ntpd log messages which will help you determine what happened to the time.
Also check that ntpd is running with:

"service ntpd status" and also "chkconfig ntpd --list" will show the startup
position of ntpd


HTH

Simon.