*BSD News Article 95068


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From: andreas@marvin.RoBIN.de (Andreas Lohr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: rdate for FreeBSD
Date: 10 May 1997 18:57:48 +0200
Organization: disorganized
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <5l29ec$3vj@marvin.robin.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin.robin.de
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:40694

In article <5k7561$85e@tube.news.pipex.net> you wrote:
> Well, xntpd may not be simple, but I wouldn't use anything else.  It's
> fairly easy to use: it's got excellent autoconfiguration, and lots of
> documentation (part of the reason why the distribution is so large).

You are right, xntpd definitally has a lot of accompanying
documentation, but it took me some time to figure out how to set
up xntpd for my simple requirements. I have a small local network
with one machine being the time server, but without a radio controlled
clock or a similar gadget. Also, I do not want it to connect to ntp
servers on the internet, because I have a dial up link only.  I
just wanted xntpd to distribute this computer's internal clock to
my network.

Here the server's /etc/ntp.conf

server 127.127.1.1 prefer
broadcast my-network ttl 16
driftfile /etc/ntp.drift

The IP address 127.127.1.1 refers to the local clock. The key is
that you have to use the "prefer" keyword to convince xntpd to
actually broadcast the local clock so that clients are able to
synchronize to the server. I had to read the sources to figure this
out. So, if anyone wants to do the same thing like I did, this
might help.

	Andreas

P.S. In order to check whether the clock synchronization actually
works, I have written a small program which uses udp port daytime/37
to retrieve the current time on all reachable machines. It includes a
small tcl/tk frontend. Anyone interested in this might e-mail me.

-- 
andreas@marvin.robin.de (home) | "Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers!"
al@rtsffm.com (work)           |