[hobbit] ntpdate question

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 11:00:54AM +0200, Dirk Kastens wrote:
> before updating our hobbit server to version 4.2.0, I tested the
> ntp configuration with the bb-ntp-1_4.sh script on the client
> nodes. When I now configure the server to use the ntp network test
> instead,  I realize that this doesn't work with most of our
> RedHat clients. I get the response
> 
> ntpdate -u -q -p 2 a.b.c.d
> server a.b.c.d, stratum 0, offset 0.000000, delay 0.00000
> 29 Aug 10:53:26 ntpdate[3509]: no server suitable for synchronization found

Funny, this is the second question about NTP checking this morning.

> The network test works with all AIX clients and with older
> RedHat clients.
> The manual page of ntpdate on a RedHat machine says, that
> "the ntpdate program is to be retired from this distribution".
> Is there another way of testing the ntp synchronisation from
> the server side or do I still have to use the bb-ntp.sh script?

Currently you have to use client-side scripts if the ntpdate program
does not work.

For the 4.2.0 release, ntp checking really was not on my mind. It 
would make lots of sense to include the output from 
    ntpq -c "rv 0"
in the client output, and then process this on the server to pickup 
the current synchronization status, stratum and clock offset, with 
suitable configuration settings to trigger an alert if it loses sync 
or the stratum gets too high.

You can regard that as a promise to improve this in a later version.


Regards,
Henrik