On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 17:53 +0100, Maarten Wiltink wrote: [...] > > Thank you for being specific Maarten. If I were a Linux novice that > > information would be very helpful. It's hard to judge skill level from > > a few posts. When I say "servers" I mean the ntpd daemons on each host. > > I only restart hosts for kernel updates or shutdown in case of > > destructive whether. :-) > > And thank you for taking the note in the spirit in which it was meant. > 'Server' is unfortunately an ambiguous term and I thought I'd head off > some possible confusion. Not necessarily yours. > > There is still some confusion on my part left unsettled, though. If you > haven't restarted the NTP processes, they will not have the new > configuration. Yes, that _would_ be a contributing factor - any problems > that are due to the old configuration would have no reason to go away. > How should I read that question?
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in my response. I recognize also that it is sometimes hard to follow responses to one item in a thread when multiple contributors answer different parts of the problem. Let me try to reconstruct the portions that led to your question. In response to my original question, David Woolley replied [Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:50:43 +0000 (14:50 EST)]: ----------[quote]---------- Orphan and local clock are mutually incompatible! ----------[unquote]---------- I took this as a suggestion to remove the the configuration lines for the undisciplined local clocks. In my response to David Woolley [Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:08:19 -0500] I was asking if he thought that having the undisciplined local clock configured could have contributed to the original problem (one server rejecting apparently good peers). ----------[quote]---------- "> > naughty boy will not be a well-behaved Orphan Child. > > Orphan and local clock are mutually incompatible! Okay, I've commented out those lines. Thanks. I haven't restarted the servers yet in case I need to query some more info. Do you think this could be a contributing factor in this problem? ----------[unquote]---------- Although I did not get a direct response from David Woolley on this point, Steve Kostecke was kind enough to clarify it in his response [02 Dec 2008 21:03:21 GMT (16:03 EST)]: ----------[quote]---------- ... Orphan Mode and the Undisciplined Local Clock are merely ways of providing a time "source" to ntpd. As with any set of time sources, how they are configured dictates which one takes precedence. Perhaps what you meant to say was using both does not provide any benefits. ----------[unquote]---------- I took this to mean that leaving in the lines for the undisciplined local clock was not a contributor to this problem. In other words, in this context, leaving the lines in would not break anything. In point of fact, taking them out *would* have broken my particular setup because I did not have a working Orphan mode configuration. All participants were not capable of running in orphan mode. Should the master server become unreachable, the other servers would stop providing time service to clients without the undisciplined local clock as a time reference. Good think I delayed restarting the ntpd service on those hosts. In his most recent reply, Steve Kostecke took time to explain the "peer loop" in this context and what would happen in my case with no undisciplined local clocks configured [Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:09:51 -0500]: ----------[quote]---------- An ntpd keeps running and continues to discipline the system clock with the last known frequency correction when all time sources become unreachable. So, no, it won't fall over. But what will happen is this ntpd will no longer be able to serve time to others unless it is configured with (a) the Undisciplined Local Clock or (b) Orphan Mode. ----------[unquote]---------- ...and with Steve Kostecke's generous gift of ntp.conf revisions from another response... ----------[quote]---------- In your case the remaining servers will select the reachable server with the lowest stratum Undisciplined Local Clock when the master (server A) is unreachable. Assuming that you restarted ntpd with the revised configuration files. ----------[unquote]---------- I hope that clears up any confusion I may have caused. Thanks for participating in this thread. :-) ./Cal _______________________________________________ questions mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
