NTP on Red Hat 8.0
 

I have tried to configure NTP on Red Hat, WITHOUT, mind you GUI intervention. Unfortunately, I'm lost.

I edited the /etc/ntp.conf file to have only the following:

server now.okstate.edu
fudge now.okstate.edu stratum 1

I changed my time to be 11:00AM (it's not 11:00AM). Then I started ntp:

/etc/init.d/ntpd start

The time changes to the correct time. HOWEVER, I removed the lines from /etc/ntp.conf. Then I stopped NTP:

/etc/init.d/ntpd stop

Then I changed my time to be 11:00AM again. THen restarted ntp:

/etc/init.d/ntpd start

Lo and behold, the time was changed to the correct time! Where is ntp getting its time if I don't specify NTP servers? HELP!

NTP on Red Hat 8.0
 

That would be because you have a server entry in your /etc/ntp/step-tickers file that is used by the following lines of the ntpd startup script.
# Adjust time to make life easy for ntpd
if [ -f /etc/ntp/step-tickers ]; then
echo -n "Syncing time for ntpd. "
/usr/sbin/ntpdate -s -b -p 8 -u `cat /etc/ntp/step-tickers`
fi

Thanks! Another question, what is the /etc/ntp.drift file for? All I see is 0.0 in that file.

Thanks again!

Here's a good answer for you. http://docsrv.caldera.com/NET_tcpip/ntpC.driftfile.html
If you do a long listing on it, you'll see that it is updated frequently.