Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3336 mails)
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Re: [SLE] Updating the system clock
- From: "Paul W. Abrahams" <abrahams@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:55:18 -0500
- Message-id: <200512161955.18149.abrahams@xxxxxxx>
On Friday 16 December 2005 7:30 pm, Bruce Marshall wrote:
> The reason that SuSE doesn't turn [ntpd] on by
> default is because it *does* put a load on all of the time servers
> (especially by people who don't know how to operate NTPD) and you are
> *supposed* to ask permission or at least notify the owner of a time server
> that you are going to access it.
Your comment got me more curious about this subject and I did some
investigation. The primary source of information about available
timeservers is at http://www.cis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html. (You
probably know that already, but my comment is for the benefit of other
readers.) Here's what's said there, a couple of web pages in:
<begin quote>
pool.ntp.org uses DNS round robin to make a random selection from a pool of
time servers who have volunteered to be in the pool. This is often good
enough for end-users. The minimal ntpd configuration file
(e.g. /etc/ntpd.conf) for using pool.ntp.org is:
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
server 2.pool.ntp.org
server pool.ntp.org
If you use only one pool server, we recommend you use the "bare" zone without
a number, but if you use several, then use the numbered ones first.
To make it possible to select a timeserver which is geographically close, we
have sub-zones of pool.ntp.org. The "continent" ones are:
Area: HostName:
Worldwide pool.ntp.org
Asia asia.pool.ntp.org
Europe europe.pool.ntp.org
North America north-america.pool.ntp.org
Oceania oceania.pool.ntp.org
South America south-america.pool.ntp.org
There are also sub-zones for many countries. Click on your continent to see
which country-zones are available there.
<end quote>
The upshot of all this is that the typical end-user should use one of the pool
timeservers (they explicitly say that's okay, and no notification is needed
or indeed possible) and put the references into /etc/ntp.conf. And given
that, the typical end-user can also turn on ntp in the runlevel section of
Yast without guilt. (And if you don't, your clock will drift.)
Paul
> The reason that SuSE doesn't turn [ntpd] on by
> default is because it *does* put a load on all of the time servers
> (especially by people who don't know how to operate NTPD) and you are
> *supposed* to ask permission or at least notify the owner of a time server
> that you are going to access it.
Your comment got me more curious about this subject and I did some
investigation. The primary source of information about available
timeservers is at http://www.cis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html. (You
probably know that already, but my comment is for the benefit of other
readers.) Here's what's said there, a couple of web pages in:
<begin quote>
pool.ntp.org uses DNS round robin to make a random selection from a pool of
time servers who have volunteered to be in the pool. This is often good
enough for end-users. The minimal ntpd configuration file
(e.g. /etc/ntpd.conf) for using pool.ntp.org is:
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
server 2.pool.ntp.org
server pool.ntp.org
If you use only one pool server, we recommend you use the "bare" zone without
a number, but if you use several, then use the numbered ones first.
To make it possible to select a timeserver which is geographically close, we
have sub-zones of pool.ntp.org. The "continent" ones are:
Area: HostName:
Worldwide pool.ntp.org
Asia asia.pool.ntp.org
Europe europe.pool.ntp.org
North America north-america.pool.ntp.org
Oceania oceania.pool.ntp.org
South America south-america.pool.ntp.org
There are also sub-zones for many countries. Click on your continent to see
which country-zones are available there.
<end quote>
The upshot of all this is that the typical end-user should use one of the pool
timeservers (they explicitly say that's okay, and no notification is needed
or indeed possible) and put the references into /etc/ntp.conf. And given
that, the typical end-user can also turn on ntp in the runlevel section of
Yast without guilt. (And if you don't, your clock will drift.)
Paul
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