Petri, I knew Linux was broken, but what you report suggests it is broken beyond my wildest imagination. First, I do know Linux supports the precision time kernel, as it has the ntp_adjtime() system call, even if it is buried in a wrapper. If so, and assuming that syscall is implemented correctly, it doesn't matter whether ticks are significant or not.
Second, Linux has completely broken the initial frequency computation and intended semantics of the frequency file. The really serious and sad issue here is that Linux has added much unnecessary baggage that disables or distorts the carefully engineered design principles. It would be much, much better to rip out all that baggage and use only what comes with the bare ntpd. Certainly, at least Solaris and FreeBSD have no such baggage. I know that at least one time in the past ntpd ran just fine on Linux, at least the ntpd version that leaves here, not the one that comes with Linux. If this is still the case, your course is clear. Dave Petri Kaukasoina wrote: > Unruh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>After I collect more data on steady state, I will rerun startups both with >>no drift file and a bad drift file to see how fast the convergence is with >>4.2.4. > > > Hi, > > On recent Linux kernels, I think the drift file is always bad after reboot. > HZ=100, no dynamic ticks aka tickless system (CONFIG_NO_HZ not set). I think > I even tried with a kernel command line option lpj= but it didn't help. > If the system is rebooted, ntpd stabilizes to a new different drift value. > > With a bad or missing drift file, time set with ntpdate, ntpd can soon take > the offset to a 100 or 200 ms error for a long time. > > If you are using Linux and are experimenting with these, please try > something like this which has given me good results (a coarse calibration of > the drift file during boot before starting ntpd): > > #!/bin/sh > DRIFTFILE=/etc/ntp/drift > NTPSERVER=ip.address.of.a.good.nearby.ntp.server > TIME=100 > # remember to stop ntpd first if running > # reset frequency offset to zero > adjtimex -f 0 > # calibrate clock rate during $TIME seconds > ntpdate -sb $NTPSERVER > sleep $TIME > ADJUST=$(ntpdate -b $NTPSERVER | sed 's/.*offset \(.*\) sec.*/\1/') > # ntpdate adjusted $ADJUST seconds > FREQUENCY=$(echo "scale=3; $ADJUST * 1000000 / $TIME" | bc) > # reset the drift file and start ntpd > echo $FREQUENCY > $DRIFTFILE > /etc/rc.d/rc.ntpd start _______________________________________________ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
