Time Synchronizing Between Two Servers

[RW]

On Mon, 7 May 2007 18:35:13 -0500
Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey at goldmark.org> wrote:

> On May 7, 2007, at 5:02 PM, RW wrote:
> 
> > If the time error is zeroed by ntpdate, and there's a drift-file, I
> > don't see that the actual drift value makes much difference. I
> > suspect that any quartz clock is overkill.
> 
> As someone already mentioned, drift data doesn't really solve the  
> problem if the amount of drift varies (often with temperature, and  
> sometimes dramatically with sleep).  The clock on my wife's G5 iMac  
> seems to be erratic, but I haven't (and won't) bother to investigate  
> further.  If her system is up to 2 seconds off for a bit after
> waking from sleep, so be it.  (If I ever start using kerberos around
> the house, I will have to address that.)
> 
> If a machine is up for months, ntpdate may have been run in the  
> distant past, so you can still a fair amount of error.
> 
> ntpd is really a very light weight thing.  When things are ticking  
> over nicely, it may make just one query every few hours and still  
> keep very good time.

I was questioning the need for a low-drift system clock on a machine
that *is* running ntpd, not the need for ntpd.