Proper Method of Time Sync?

[Chuck Swiger]

Jonathan Horne wrote:
[ ...ntpdate versus ntpd... ]
> so, i have a workstation and a server, which i originally did method 1 on,
> but soon enough, time drifted quite a bit.  so i switched it to the 2nd
> method, and they appear to be sync'd perfectly.  a third box i set up, i
> did only method 2, and this one did not stay synced at all.  after i
> manually ran 'ntpdate -v -b us.pool.ntp.org', this box straightend up.
> 
> are both methods required for proper time syncronization, or can one rely
> only on the ntpd method?

You can use both together quite safely, but usually only the second is needed.

If ntpd can't correct the clock by itself, that generally means it's off my more 
than 2000 seconds or whatever the sanity-check threshold is, and needs a manual 
correction or one-time use of ntpdate before ntpd will keep things sane from there.

-- 
-Chuck