New ntp install from tarball

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 25 December 2014 04:28:05 Tom H did opine
And Gene did reply:
> On Sun, Dec 21, 2014 at 2:42 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday 21 December 2014 11:58:17 Tom H did opine
> > 
> > And Gene did reply:
> >> On Sun, Dec 21, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> >>> I just installed ntp-4.2.8 in the default /usr/local prefix, and
> >>> adjusted the stuff in /etc/init.d/ntp, and in /etc/defaults/ntp,
> >>> and its working, but neither I nor my watch script seem to be able
> >>> to locate a "drift" or "ntp.drift" file that the default 10.04.4
> >>> LTS version kept in the /var/lib/ntp subdir.
> >> 
> >> Check "{,/usr/local}/etc/ntp.drift".
> > 
> > Nothing ntp related there Tom.
> > 
> > Thanks.
> 
> You're welcome.
> 
> In the repo-provided ntp package, the driftfile can be set either via
> "-f /path/to/file" in "/etc/default/ntp" or "driftfile /path/to/file"
> in "/etc/ntp.conf", with the default being "/etc/ntp.drift" (unless
> Ubuntu patches in a different default).

Apparently they do, Tom, its in /var/lib/ntp/ as "drift".  Because clock
drift is usually pretty slow, I wrote a monitoring utility several years
ago, which does an hourly check, its output to a log file generates this:

Thu Dec 25 09:55:25 UTC 2014
drift=-47.440
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
*juniperberry.ca 131.188.3.220    2 u  677 1024  377  111.393    1.867   1.631
+ntp.sunflower.c 132.236.56.250   3 u   43 1024  377   55.996  -10.732   7.842

I'll probably not restart it after the next reboot, everything seems to be
working nominally well now.  The offsets are staying close to zero, and
the drift is staying at about -47.xx so I'm happy.

Its also Christmas Day here in this time zone, so I hope everyone who so 
freely offers their help on this list will have a most enjoyable day with 
their families.

Now I need to study the docs and see if I can reduce the server loading by
2 or 3 machines by using this one as the local server.  No use wasting
their bandwidth.

Have a Happy New Year too.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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