Speed up ntp on boot

When booting my computer I have to wait 2-3 minutes for it to
synchronize with an ntp server. Is there a way to speed this up,
perhaps allowing the loading to continue while ntp tries to connect?

I changed my ntp.conf to point to the time server on my local network,
instead of going out to north-america.pool.ntp.org, but it didn't seem
to make any difference.

ntpq -p
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
================================================== ============================
rrcs-67-52-214- .INIT. 16 u - 1024 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
*phoenix 209.132.176.4 2 u 45 512 377 0.265 -7.436 0.798
+rbl.earlham.edu 69.93.111.178 3 u 173 512 377 44.119 -7.562 2.860


--

John ((E-Mail Removed))

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:48:35 -0600, John Thompson <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> When booting my computer I have to wait 2-3 minutes for it to
> synchronize with an ntp server. Is there a way to speed this up,
> perhaps allowing the loading to continue while ntp tries to connect?

> I changed my ntp.conf to point to the time server on my local network,
> instead of going out to north-america.pool.ntp.org, but it didn't seem
> to make any difference.

> ntpq -p
> remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
> ================================================== ============================
> rrcs-67-52-214- .INIT. 16 u - 1024 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
> *phoenix 209.132.176.4 2 u 45 512 377 0.265 -7.436 0.798
> +rbl.earlham.edu 69.93.111.178 3 u 173 512 377 44.119 -7.562 2.860

You don't say what distro, but on Fedora 8, if you want to eliminate
this synchronization on startup, comment out all the lines in
/etc/ntp/step-tickers
the first line of which says:
# List of servers used for initial synchronization.
If there are no servers in that file (or they are all commented out),
it won't try to sync on startup.

--
Dale Dellutri <(E-Mail Removed)> (lose the Q's)

On Feb 20, 3:09 pm, Dale Dellutri <ddelQQQl...@panQQQix.com> wrote:

> If there are no servers in that file (or they are all commented out),
> it won't try to sync on startup.

The correct solution depends on your distribution, but you definitely
want to make sure you are synchronizing on startup as efficiently as
possible.

DS

Is the "iburst" option supposed to help with that?

rick jones
--
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, rebirth...
where do you want to be today?
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

> When booting my computer I have to wait 2-3 minutes for it to
> synchronize with an ntp server. Is there a way to speed this up,
> perhaps allowing the loading to continue while ntp tries to connect?

> I changed my ntp.conf to point to the time server on my local network,
> instead of going out to north-america.pool.ntp.org, but it didn't seem
> to make any difference.

> ntpq -p
> remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
> ================================================== ============================
> rrcs-67-52-214- .INIT. 16 u - 1024 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
> *phoenix 209.132.176.4 2 u 45 512 377 0.265 -7.436 0.798
> +rbl.earlham.edu 69.93.111.178 3 u 173 512 377 44.119 -7.562 2.860

1- make sure you don't use ntpdate (let "ntpd -g" set the time in the
background as soon as it finds out).
2- use `iburst' option on (some of) your servers in ntp.conf so that
ntpd will find out quickly.


Stefan

On 2008-02-20, Dale Dellutri <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:48:35 -0600, John Thompson <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> When booting my computer I have to wait 2-3 minutes for it to
>> synchronize with an ntp server. Is there a way to speed this up,
>> perhaps allowing the loading to continue while ntp tries to connect?
>
>> I changed my ntp.conf to point to the time server on my local network,
>> instead of going out to north-america.pool.ntp.org, but it didn't seem
>> to make any difference.
>
>> ntpq -p
>> remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
>> ================================================== ============================
>> rrcs-67-52-214- .INIT. 16 u - 1024 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
>> *phoenix 209.132.176.4 2 u 45 512 377 0.265 -7.436 0.798
>> +rbl.earlham.edu 69.93.111.178 3 u 173 512 377 44.119 -7.562 2.860

> You don't say what distro, but on Fedora 8, if you want to eliminate
> this synchronization on startup, comment out all the lines in
> /etc/ntp/step-tickers
> the first line of which says:
> # List of servers used for initial synchronization.
> If there are no servers in that file (or they are all commented out),
> it won't try to sync on startup.

Excellent; thank you. I am using Fedora8 and indeed there were 3 entries
for the fedora ntp server pool, as well as phoenix (local ntp server)
and earlham.edu, which explains why it was in the "ntpq -p" listing even
though it have been commented out of ntp.conf.

Since phoenix synchronizes with north-america.pool.ntp.org, I think that
should be adequate for my network.

--

John ((E-Mail Removed))