Ntp -- getting it to work

[Michael]

On 2014-11-22, at 2:01 AM, René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday November 21 2014 19:30:24 Michael wrote:
> 
>> And yes, ntpq -p (mind your p's and q's), and ntpq -c sysinfo, work fine.
>> But "loopinfo" seems to be gone.
> 
> Out of curiosity, what's wrong with the system's ntp?

I'm one of those where the poll never goes above 64 seconds, the frequency never settles down, the system log shows about one clock reset every 4-8 hours, etc.

Basically, the system ntpd is not happy.
===

One thing I've discovered: If you have "pacemaker" running -- and it runs by default (com.apple.pacemaker), then you'll NEVER get it happy. Pacemaker's scale is different from ntpd's scale.

From my /etc/rc.local:

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.pacemaker.plist
/usr/libexec/pacemaker -d /var/db.local/pacemaker.drift -a 8 &

Pacemaker wants to skew the system clock. But it uses the same data file as ntpd, and does not say "Hey, ntp is running, I'll do nothing".

My hardware clock, when pacemaker is not running, according to the system ntp, is over -500. And with that error rate, ntp will not sync.

I have pacemaker in that line using a custom drift file. If I put that file to "-50", then the system ntp reports that my drift is over 500, and won't sync

So ... right now, I'm trying to binary search, to find where the system ntpd is happy. I tried -30, and the system ntpd was not happy (never went above 64 poll). But using the ports version of ntpd, it syncs happily (got up to 256 poll). Go figure.

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