Re: ntpdate steps 86400 seconds

K.Dinh.P wrote:

I have a question concerning ntpdate. I synchronize to a timeserver using crontab with ntpdate v4.1.1. The syslog is shown below:

Sep 23 23:57:00 xxx ntpdate[7160]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset -0.018167 sec

Sep 23 23:58:00 xxx ntpdate[7163]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset 0.011571 sec

Sep 23 23:59:00 xxx ntpdate[7167]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset 0.000305 sec

Sep 24 00:00:01 xxx ntpdate[7176]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset -0.008321 sec

Sep 25 00:01:00 xxx ntpdate[7226]: step time server 10.168.214.100 offset 86400.000773 sec

Sep 25 00:02:00 xxx ntpdate[7232]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset -0.006971 sec

Sep 25 00:03:01 xxx ntpdate[7285]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset 0.011816 sec

Sep 25 00:04:00 xxx ntpdate[7288]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset -0.002207 sec

Sep 25 00:05:00 xxx ntpdate[7291]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset -0.007892 sec

Sep 25 00:06:00 xxx ntpdate[7338]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset 0.010497 sec

Sep 25 00:07:01 xxx ntpdate[7341]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset -0.014260 sec

Sep 25 00:08:01 xxx ntpdate[7344]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset 0.013051 sec

Sep 25 00:09:00 xxx ntpdate[7347]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset -0.015531 sec

Sep 25 00:10:01 xxx ntpdate[7350]: adjust time server 10.168.214.100 offset 0.019941 sec

Sep 25 00:11:00 xxx ntpdate[7353]: Can't adjust the time of day: Invalid argument

Sep 25 00:12:00 xxx ntpdate[7356]: Can't adjust the time of day: Invalid argument

Sep 25 00:13:00 xxx ntpdate[7359]: Can't adjust the time of day: Invalid argument

Sep 25 00:14:00 xxx ntpdate[7362]: Can't adjust the time of day: Invalid argument

Sep 25 00:15:01 xxx ntpdate[7367]: Can't adjust the time of day: Invalid argument



Why does it suddenly begin to step with +86400 seconds? This suddenly happens every day around midnight. Furthermore the adjustment seems to go on for a while. It ends to not to be able to adjust the time. The time server on 10.168.214.100 has not been changed in that period.




ntpdate is deprecated. Perhaps what you are seeing is one of the many reasons why!

I'd suggest that you install and configure ntpd. You will then be running supported code; code that works. I can't say with certainty but I belive that ntpd would place less load on the system than running ntpdate every minute with cron.
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