I just don't understand why you don't want to sync with time servers. If you are running commercial servers and allowing connections on port 80 why not add udp connections on port 123. I run http, email and a time server for uk.pool.ntp.org and have done so for a couple of years and never had a problem with port 123. If you are going to have security problems then they are likely on port 80 where crackers can get at the system via the tcp stack.

As regards your current problem - there is something more fundamentally wrong with your network comms than the config of the time server. The time server will provide some kind of time whether it is incorrect or not. Your problem seems to be that the other systems are unable to get responses to requests. This can be due to the following causes;

1. the time server is not running and therefore not responding;
2. your time server is not allowing incoming requests;
3. the requesting systems are not configured to request time from the correct server.

I am sure you have a network communication problem and without full details of how the network is configured and how the boxes communicate with each other it is difficult to help. To summarise what I have said before; If the boxes are on the same lan and inside a designated firewall which allows communications (all ports open) between the boxes then you should have no problems. If this is not the case and there are firewalls in place that exclude port 123 then the boxes will not be able to get responses to requests and the system will not work.

the only reason i am not using external ntp servers is because i am not allowed to open any ports in our external firewall. i cannot change any configuration settings on the external firewall at all.

internally, between the servers themselves there are no firewalls at all.

its like:

........... firewall
.............. |
............. hub -----------------------------------------
.............. | ......... | ......... | ............ |
........ ntp server .. server 1 .. server 2 ........ etc


(using . for spacing)

I have re-read your posts and the only thing I can see that might cause a problem was the broadcast address that you used in the ntp server config file. The broadcast address should end with 255. If you have no reference time server then read up the ntp documentation on using fudge. From the network setup you have in the diagram there is no reason why this should not work.

ok, changed the broadcast numbers to see if that helped, and didnt seem to.
i presume this fudge thing will stop it working at all unless its set right, is that so?

thanks

I've now tried this in the conf file on my ntp server:


i also tried setting both stratums to 1 and 10 aswell as 14, but each time i get a response of:


i can only presume from this that i am doing the fudge thing wrong. cos it still says stratum 16.

i shall continue to read about it, but if you spot a silly error, please let me know.

thanks

right

have updated my configuration file on my server like so:

still says its a stratum 16 server from the ntpdate - whatever it was command

thanks again

That is correct. Stratum relates to the time source. A primary time server eg an device like an atomic clock or radio frequency clock is a stratum 1. If your system was using a stratum 1 server as a time source it would register as a stratum 2. Since you are using your local (fudge) system clock it registers as a stratum 16 because the clock is not a reliable source. In my ntp server I have 7 different time servers listed as source servers and if one is unreachable it defines it as stratum 16.

To check your local server use the command;
ntpq -p

what im after tho is a way of tricking the clients into thinking the ntp server is a lower stratum, even though it still running of the more unreliable hardware clock. either that or forcing the clients to sync with it even though its at stratum 16

heres another example of what i'm trying to achieve.

say i have 3 computers,
all running different flavours of linux.

they are all connected via an ethernet connection to a hub

the hub is not connected to anything else

no computer has internet access.

but i want one of the computers to keep the time, and the other two to follow suit.

so if the time on that one computer is adjusted forward 10 minutes, the time on the other two servers automatically adjusts forward 10 minutes (doesnt have to be simultaneous tho - within 4 or 5 hours for example)

----------------------

now i assumed that the ntpd could be used to achieve this, maybe i was wrong, but thats the general idea of what im trying to achieve, without all the complicated bits which i dont need to worry about.

You cannot trick ntp. ntp rates the source based on certain parameters,such as offset, jitter etc. The ntp servers are not interested in how accurate the source time is. What ntp will do is calculate the drift of each system and then correct the system time for that drift and this can be as accurate as 1ms. Initially ntp sends requests every 64s then as ntp sets the drift it will stabilise at a request every 1024s. The clocks on all the systems should be within 100ms of each other if each is running ntp servers.

i think theres something im not getting here.

do all the computers need to be running an ntp server?

i thought i could run one ntp server and have all the rest being clients thereof