Re: NTP stratum problem

wicks wrote:

Hello,

We have solris stations with ntp 4.2, act as a server and clients.
These Solaris clients act as peers when the server is down. We have
Vxworks machines polling these Solaris clients using VxWorks
SntpTimeGet command.
This setup works fine, except vxworks machines do not get ntp synced
from solaris clients, when the server is down. ( When the solaris
clients boot up - Ntp server is down). This problem does not happen if
ntp server goes down once solaris clients get synced initially to the
ntp server.

From TCPDUMP, we found that solris clients send stratum 0 to vxworks,
when they do not get synced to the ntp server( initially), vxworks does
not accept ntp messages with stratum set to Zero.

Is there a way to set clients statum to non zero value, before clients
get synced to the ntp server?

Our config file is:
tinker stepout 20
server 10.2.10.70 prefer burst minpoll 4 maxpoll 6
server 10.2.10.71 burst minpoll 4 maxpoll 6


You should probably be using "iburst" instead of "burst". "burst" is a special purpose hack used, I believe, dialup internet connections.

"iburst" says to send the first eight queries at two second intervals. It is used to get enough information to start synchronizing the clock in about sixteen seconds instead of about 5 and a half minutes.

You also should probably NOT be specifying minpoll and maxpoll. Ntpd is designed select an appropriate polling interval from the default range of 6 to 10; it is rare to encounter a situation where something else will work better.

I believe that "stratum 0" means "I am not synchronized" and clients are quite correct in refusing to accept time from an unsynchronized system.

You can add lines like:
#
# Declare the local clock to be the clock of last resort.
# It will be used to serve time in the absence of any other.
#
server 127.127.1.0 # Local clock, unit 0
fudge 127.127.1.0 stratum 10

Setting the stratum to 10 when serving the unsynchronized local clock is conventional and makes it unlikely that ANYONE will use such a server unless there is nothing else available.
.

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