[ntp:questions] xntpd and Timekeeper

[Miroslav Lichvar]

Having recently deployed some new appliances running FSMlabs
Timekeeper software as NTP servers, I have noticed an apparent
incompatibility from older Solaris hosts running xntpd. All hosts
running NTP version 4 are synchronising correctly. Older AIX and
Solaris hosts running NTP version 3 (xntpd) are experiencing
excessively large offsets when compared to using NTP version 4.

Can you show some examples?

If you use ntpd on the server, the xntpd clients work ok?

[Miroslav Lichvar]

When NTP version 4 is stopped and start NTP version 3 the figures look

You may need to wait longer for things to settle down.

# ntpq -p
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset disp
==============================================================================
+host1 .PTP. 1 u 27 64 377 0.99 -90.299 2.09
+host2 .PTP. 1 u 14 64 377 0.11 -90.642 1.79
-host3 .PTP. 1 u 11 64 377 1.34 -90.717 2.01
*host4 .PTP. 1 u 49 64 337 0.09 -89.825 1.75
With this host, the binary for ntpq is the same for xntp as for
ntp…(ie the same binary is being used to produce both results above)
Similar symptoms are noted for AIX and Solaris.

Does this happen also when you reset the kernel frequency with "ntptime
-f 0" before starting xntpd, or remove the drift file? I think it could
be due to a difference in how ntpd and xntpd are controlling the clock.
If xntpd didn't use the kernel discipline, it would need to correct for
the kernel frequency offset that was set by ntpd.

If that doesn't help, please enable the loopstats log and post it here
after xntpd has been running for at least a day. I doubt this is an
issue with the server.