On 8/12/2010 9:03 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
ntpd always tries to move the clock fractional seconds at a time
msntp does that, too, if you give the -a flag. (You have to give either -a or -r for it to change the system time at all.)
ntpdate also does this, as long as the delta is less than half a second, which it'd better be for an hourly sync schedule, since 0.5s/hr is 139 ppm.
ntpdate does no sanity check at all
msntp does. You can configure the min and max error it will correct. Its defaults are sane.