[Soekris] Clock instability and network adapters

[Harlan Stenn]

Stanislav wrote:
> Tim Jakobsen wrote:
> 
> > ... I experience that the clock is being adjusted by ntpd. Sometimes  
> > by up to 12 seconds.
> 
> If the drift is basically constant and you are not continuously
> connected and thus not able to sync often, you can use adjtimex
> to correct for systematic drift.

Agreed.

> Also check the ntpd options, the threshold when the clock
> is forced to the current time as opposed to the system clock
> rate being adjusted is normally settable. From the ntpd manpage:
> 
> -x
>     Normally, the time is slewed if the offset is less
>     than the step threshold, which is 128 ms by default,
>     and stepped if above the threshold. This option
>     sets the threshold to 600 s, which is well within
>     the accuracy window to set the clock manually.
> 
> This is on Linux but I suppose there's an equivalent
> for other unices too.

It's a standard option of ntpd.  And I would not want to be making a
12-second adjustment using it.

Better to find/fix the underlying problem.

There may be information on this at http://support.ntp.org/Support .

I did not specifically reference the Troublsshooting NTP section,
because I am not certain that a more basic problem (like OS or NTP
configuration) should not be considered first.

H