The Sunday 2004-08-08 at 08:48 -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
Somewhere in the documentation it explains how it works. At first, it requests the time very often, and then, as the clock get synchronized, the interval increases. I understand it is hardcoded. The polling is dynamic. If you want to set up a longer or a predictable interval, set up ntpdate(8) triggered by cron. Note that when you boot, ntpdate runs shortly after the network is fired up to set the initial time.
I understood we were talking about the xntpd daemon, as the subject says, not about ntpdate calls: both are quite different. ntpdate is called just once, to set the clock right away, and exit. The daemon, however, is designed to keep the clock synchronized, and discipline the local clock. It needs a permanent network connection, and there is no need to tell it how offten to poll servers: it's designers have thought that out better than we can. Of course, the polling interval of xntpd is not fixed, it varies. What I meant with 'hardcoded' is that you don't change it. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson