Dec 29, 2025 12:09:36 PM Otto Moerbeek <[email protected]>: > On Mon, Dec 29, 2025 at 05:32:04PM +0000, H. Hartzer wrote: > >> On Mon Dec 29, 2025 at 11:21 AM UTC, Dorian Buettner wrote: >>> On Mon, 29 Dec 2025 05:37:02 +0000 >>> "H. Hartzer" <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> Dec 29 05:19:23 myhost ntpd[50297]: adjusting local clock by >>>> 519.109281s Dec 29 05:20:27 myhost ntpd[50297]: adjusting local clock >>>> by 518.792356s >>>> >>>> Right after it adjusts the local clock, I check, and it's still 518~ >>>> seconds behind. >>> >>> man ntpd - adjustment ("adjusting", progressive form iirc) is ongoing, >>> by speeding up or down your local clock until it matches ntp time >> >> I see, thank you! I noticed that it seemed to adjust it by maybe a half >> second per minute. >> >> I think the log message is very confusing. Maybe it should say: >> >> adjusting local clock by 0.49 seconds (518 seconds to go) >> >> -Henrich >> > > "Adjusting" is fine, it already signals that the action will take some > time. Otherwise the message would have said: "adjusted the clock", or > "setting the clock". > > -otto
The confusing part is not the "adjusting", it is the "by". When I see a log message saying "adjusting local clock by xxxx seconds", I would expect the local clock to be moved xxxx seconds closer to the reference clock. However, that appears not to be the case based on OP's logs (and it isn't in my experience). That "xxxx" in the logs appears instead to actually be the current offset of the local clock from the reference clock. If the log message said some to the effect of "adjusting local clock; current offset xxxx seconds", it would make more sense, at least to me. Heinrich's suggestion would work too. My apologies for jumping into this conversation uninvited, but I have an additional forehead wrinkle or two from the first time I saw this on my own machines :) c2
