[CentOS] HOWTO Stratum 1 NTP server under CentOS 7

[Jonathan Billings]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 09:55:12AM -0500, xaos wrote:
>
> Alexander,
> 
> First off, CentOS7 came with cronyd. Which was very annoying
> because when I tried to remove it, it had 2 prereqs:
> anaconda
> initial-setup
>
> Now, I don't know why the setup program kept these
> 2 around. I think CentOS7 needs a bit growing up.

'initial-setup' is the program that runs on your first boot, and it
requires 'anaconda'.  'anaconda' requires the 'chrony' package.
Services in the default install require a time-sync daemon, and chrony
is the default, so this isn't really unexpected.  Once a system is set
up, it doesn't remove the initial-setup package.

> Then I installed ntp. However, when I started it
> it seems that it was not compiled with: --enable-all-clocks

That doesn't seem to be the case.  Looking at the NTP spec file, I
see:

%configure \
        --sysconfdir=%{_sysconfdir}/ntp/crypto \
        --with-openssl-libdir=%{_libdir} \
        --without-ntpsnmpd \
        --enable-all-clocks --enable-parse-clocks \
        --enable-ntp-signd=%{_localstatedir}/run/ntp_signd \
        --disable-local-libopts

(check the git.centos.org version yourself: 
https://git.centos.org/blob/rpms!ntp.git/dbacec4466ee70248db634b110bfad8a2b74cd82/SPECS!ntp.spec
)

As far as I can tell, there is literally no reason why you can't use
the packaged ntpd.

If you are having a problem with getting the packaged ntpd working, I
suggest filing a bug against the RHEL package.  The package has many
patches, perhaps one of them is interfering with detecting your
device. 


-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>