Volker and Steven, Thanks for the tip! Can either of you advice me on how to configure xntp to sync the time on a regular basis? I can't seem to find any useful tips on configuration.

It's in a set of HTML manuals, but canbe a bit of a pain to understand (well, it was for me). Edit /etc/ntp.conf It should contain server 127.127.1.0 # local clock (LCL) fudge 127.127.1.0 stratum 10 # LCL is unsynchronized (though I think that should be stratum 15, I think there was some trouble with that years ago and it should make no practical difference) Then you need to find a time server. If you don't know of one nearby, try any of ## ***stratum 1*** #server bitsy.mit.edu #server ntp.colby.edu #server tick.usno.navy.mil #server tock.usno.navy.mil ## ***stratum 2*** #server dominator.eecs.harvard.edu #server sundial.columbia.edu #server time.nrc.ca #server www2.cmc.ec.gc.ca xntpd will sync to all configured servers, but have a primary lock on the one with the lowest stratum number and the lowest jitter. Use ntpdate -q to find out whether anything is available, you may also have to use -u with it depending on your network setup. If ntpdate returns a stratum 0, it means the time server isn't one, or your firewall is blocking the ntp port, or a timeserver runs old software on VMS which is compatible with NTP version 3, and should be compatible with NTP version 4 but isn't (don't laugh, I have that here). On top of that, you can play with logging, but there doesn't seem to be much benefit in that (other than for checking time errors). Once the daemon is running, get its status with ntpq -c pe. The 3rd column is the current stratum number for each server, 16 means N/A, it doesn't get better than 1. Volker