goofyzig wrote:
Hi there.  A quick question about what to expect when it comes to NTP
failures.  I configured a Meinberg NTP server (software-based server),

Meinberg don't do a software NTP Server, although they do do a Windows installer for the, University of Delaware, reference implementation of ntpd.

had it working, serving time to the back-end hosts,  Reachability at
377 for its two NTP upstream time sources (internet NTP servers).
Once configured, I wanted to see how the server failed.

My expectation was that once Reachability went to zero, the server
would stop serving time since it no longer has a source itself.  So I
blocked port 123 UDP/TCP at the firewall, and sure enough,
Reachability for the two upstream sources slowly wound down from 377
to zero.  However, once Reachability got to zero, the Meinberg NTP

I think there have been bugs of that nature. Which version of the ntpd code are you using?

server CONTINUED to serve time, and CONTINUED to say that each of the
two upstream servers were believable, as if it was still getting time
from them (but it was not).  I confirmed the drops at the firewall.

Could you please include the ntpq peers, assoc and rv output. You will need to use the association id's in the rv sub-command to get details for the indvidual upstream servers.

Note that, if you have a local clock defined, which you should only do after due consideration, the server will never stop serving the time with a valid stratum.

The Reachability was at zero, so I know the Meinberg software was not
getting NTP time from anywhere.  Yet, it kept serving NTP time to its
back-end hosts, and kept saying that ach of the two upstream servers
were good (one colored green, the other yellow, with the * and the +
signs next to them).   After 5 hours of zero Reachability, nothing
changed.

That sounds like the ntpq peers output, although the standard ntpq doesn't colour code.

So my question is:  how long does it take before the Meinberg server
declares itself in a "failed" state and stop serving NTP?  Is that how
it's supposed to work?  I looked all over the Meinberg site and could

As I said it is not Meiberg's ntpd implementation. You want to use http://www.ntp.org/

not find any forum or literature regarding how the NTP server is
expected to fail.  Maybe Im missing a setting?  Thanks for any
help!!! :)

The correct behaviour is described in the draft NTP v4 RFC <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto-13>.

The output stratum should go to 16 before the reachability hits zero, and I'd also expect the sys.peer and selected flags to drop as well. However this is a fiddly area, and I'd have to double check the code and draft RFC.

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