Time Updates

[Steve Lamb]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> OK, somebody who is henceforth forever plonked thinks it's appropriate to
> disagree with this statement in private email.  If I wanted to have private
> discussions with you I wouldn't be on a mailing list.

    Irony abounds.  Plonked by people for keeping mail on list.  Plonked by
people for taking it off list.  Sorry, but the venue is the choice of the
sender and I felt it was straying too far for the list.

> So, it's got nothing to do with the fact that you can download an ntp
> package that's just about exactly the size of ntpdate.  It's got to do with
> the fact that it's a SERVER.  If you don't know what you're doing, and you
> start running servers, some network admins are going to get a little ticked
> off with you.

    I highly doubt this is one of those cases.  Running a mail server or an
web server on a home connection, yeah, I can see that.  Firing up an NTP
CLIENT (which also happens to be a server) to pull from pool probably will
never raise eyebrows.  I mean there's only a dozen or so custom one for
Windows and it's been standard in that OS since XP as a continuous client.

    As I said from the onset though, my advice was not for either one.  My
advice was to give a string which hit both and allowed the OP to choose.  Mea
culpa for actually providing a comprehensive answer that presented both
options and allowed for end-user choice.

> On top of that, it's a server that's always doing something.

    That's a gross over statement.

{grey at teleute:~} ps auwx | grep ntp
ntp       5182  0.0  0.0   4176   616 ?        Ss   Jun19   0:02
/usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -u 120:130 -g


    Since Jun 19th, 79 days ago, it has used a whopping 2 seconds of CPU time.
  Lemme break it down for you.  6825600 seconds of elapsed of which 2 were
spent keeping the machine's clock in sync.  Well, correction, this particular
install servers as a third tier for my local network and those 2 seconds were
spent syncing the local machine and answering queries from my game machine, my
wife's machine and my laptop; all of which run continuous NTP *clients*, 2 of
which happen to be in a package named "ntp-server".  :P

> It's just more processes that a normal user doesn't need.  For a normal
> user, with a normal computer, running ntpdate every time you power up,
> configure a network interface, or at least every 24 hours, will keep your
> machine close enough to universal time that you won't know the difference.

    Yes, and I left that up to the OP to determine instead of presuming to
foist what I felt was the better choice upon him.  Since I'm "forever plonked"
I'm sure this question will go unanswered but, seriously, what is so wrong
with letting the other people be informed of choices and actually choose or...
if nothing else, asking more questions?