On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 9:14 AM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> wrote: > > ntp is designed for timeservers that by design do not make the clock > jump around. Every second on the wall clock actually happens, none are > missing. To do that, ntp adjusts the length of a second till the > machine's time creeps up towards the real time as defined by the U.S > Navy. Unless you are running software that is extremely time-critical > (eg centralized auth servers, science experiments, etc) or you operate a > proper time server, you absolutely do not need this behaviour ever.[1] >
I'd argue the opposite. Assuming your system boots with approximately the correct time then slewing the clock is going to be the best way to maintain time. Now, if you're talking about a system that starts up with no concept of the real time then I'd say the best approach is to do a one-time sync to a time server, and then run ntpd from then on to maintain the time using slewing. Obviously you don't want to slew from the epoch to the current time. The one-time sync strikes me as the sort of thing that might ideally go into an initramfs. If you're obtaining your root filesystem over the network it might even be a dependency. Doing it that early eliminates most of the issues with logging and running services. -- Rich
