ntpd, chrony [was: Re: [plug] Backimg up entire drive]

[Cameron Patrick]

On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 07:55:57PM +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:

| I was having probs with ntp and decided to shift to chrony.  Whilst
| initially happy, I have gone back to ntp.
| 
| Chrony requires rtc as a module or compiled in

!? Not AFAIK.  It can take advantage of it if present, though.  From my
/etc/chrony/chrony.conf:

# Specify the file where real-time clock data is stored.  To use this you
# must have enhanced real-time clock support compiled into your kernel.
# Uncomment the next line if you do.

rtcfile /var/lib/chrony/chrony.rtc

It was commented out by default.

| Time regulation was poor compared to ntp on a dialup with a high usage
| (i.e., teenagers ...)

!? I'm using it on a couple of machines with ADSL lines and have seen no
problems with it keeping time in sync to the ntp server.

| Didnt like stop/start operation (would silently die - often!)

Hmm, haven't noticed that, even when I was back on dialup.

| gentoo has had a tick adjust in the kernel that ntp can handle, but
| chrony demands it be only set to 100. 

Ahh.  That may be a real problem.  Since I'm a Debian person and have
conservative tastes in kernels, I haven't been bitten by this one
either. ;-)

| overall I find ntp just works

(except when it thinks the clock is too far out and gives up entirely,
or randomly decides to stop talking to the ntp server for some reason or
other)

Cameron.