ntpdate installed but time differs from nrc official?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Friday 09 June 2006 02:07, David Armour wrote:
> hello,
>
> thanks for your reply, and for its promptness!
>
> > On Friday 09 June 2006 00:27, David Armour wrote:
> >> hello,
> >>
> >> synaptic says that ntpdate is installed, but the time shown seems 'fast'
> >> relative to the (canadian) national research council's official time
> >> signal, by about six minutes! any ideas why this should occur?
> >>
> >> thanks for any pointers.
> >
> > ntpdate only synchronizes the clock when executed by script (e.g. at
> > startup) or manually.  I believe you want to install ntp-server and
> > ntp-doc (for the documentation).
>
> i installed both, and was mucking about in some of the documentation,
> when i happened to look under System>Administration> Time & Date.... duh.
>
> unfortunately, once i'd selected 'synchronize with internet servers now'
> and watched my desktop clock changing back three minutes, i thought i
> might as well press the 'periodically synchronize with internet servers'
> button. unfortunately, that seemed to lock up the system, requiring a
> crtl-alt-backspace salute!
>
> once back, and trying to select that text for this message, the time &
> date screen told me the ntp server was not installed and began to go
> through the motions of downloading and installing the same two files...
>
> somewhat confused, if more accurate chronologically, in rainy langford,
> sir, i remain
>
> yr grateful correspondent.

I currently only have Ubuntu installed in servers, so my experience may be of 
limited relevance (my desktop is currently SUSE, but that will be changing 
shortly).  

When installed in the Ubuntu server (and I can see no reason why that would be 
different for the desktop), ntp-server defaults to synchronize with 
ntp.ubuntu.com.  This may not be the best choice for you depending on your 
connectivity with ntp.ubuntu.com and it's responsiveness.

I don't know what the Gnomish way of changing the time server is, but the 
configuration file is /etc/ntp.conf.  Early on in the file you will find:

# You do need to talk to an NTP server or two (or three).
#server ntp.your-provider.example

server ntp.ubuntu.com

# pool.ntp.org maps to more than 100 low-stratum NTP servers.
# Your server will pick a different set every time it starts up.
#  *** Please consider joining the pool! ***
#  ***  <http://www.pool.ntp.org/#join>  ***
#server pool.ntp.org

pool.ntp.org is plenty accurate enough for desktop use and will likely get you 
closer time servers to synch with.  If you comment out (with #) server 
ntp.ubuntu.com and remove the # for server pool.ntp.org that will switch the 
source that it looks for to the volunteer ntp.org pool.  I'd try going with 
that as the most likely source of the apparent freeze is network or remote 
time server latency.

Don't forget that you'll need to restart ntp-server to get it to re-read the 
config file (if you don't know how to stop/start a daemon, rebooting will do 
it).

If that doesn't help, then someone who is using ntp through Gnome is going to 
have to help out....

Scott K