🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Brpns5.7w@sounds.wa.com> BrianW@SoundS.WA.com
	(Brian Willoughby) writes:
>I would appreciate it if someone could send me a few pointers concerning setup
>of NTP on the NeXT (I"m running System 2.2 on an isolated NeXTdimension with
>SLIP and UUCP, but no ethernet connections).

You have IP connectivity, that's what counts.  NTP will
compensate for SLIP's latency.  (However, you might not want NTP
activity to initiate SLIP sessions, especially after ntpd has a
chance to determine your machine's drift compensation value.)

>I have read the Man pages for ntp ntpd and ntpdc, but there is nothing in
>NeXTadmin or NeXTanswers/92_spring about setting up NTP.

NeXT stores NTP configuration information in the NetInfo
/locations/ntp directory.  /locations/ntp has two interesting
properties:

	server
		corresponds to "Master" in NextAdmin
	host
		corresponds to "Clone" in NextAdmin

Suppose you have a small local network of machines called
myhost, client1, client2, etc. (gee, I wonder where *those* names
came from :-) ).  I want  myhost  to get time from the outside
world, and the various clients to get time from myhost.

On myhost:

	# niutil -create . /locations/ntp
	# niutil -createprop . /locations/ntp server outside.world.com
	# niutil -createprop . /locations/ntp host myhost

On each client:

	# niutil -create . /locations/ntp
	# niutil -createprop . /locations/ntp server
	# niutil -createprop . /locations/ntp host myhost

(Sites with "network" NetInfo domains may be able to save some steps.)
(Shell-haters can use NetInfoManager.)

The idea here is that every machine sees  myhost  listed in a
"host" property, so that it becomes a "clone" server.  Only
myhost  knows about the external NTP server.  Clients don't
need to be enumerated; the mere presence of /locations/ntp
is sufficient.

>Is the solution as simple as adding a crontab.local entry for "/usr/etc/ntp -s
>clock" as user root?

No!  That will do *bad* things.  (Fortunately, NeXTs run "slow.")

>                      If so, then why is there a need for the ntpd daemon?  I
>was able to run "/usr/etc/ntp clock" before the ntpd process was started.

ntpd makes _gentle_ changes in the machine's current time, and
attempts to figure out what the hardware clock's long-term
natural tendency is so that timekeeping can stay more or less
accurate even when there isn't an external time reference
available.

ntp -s  "shocks" the current time setting and has no long-term
benefit.

					-=EPS=-
-- 
Give a man a hamburger, and he eats lunch for a day.
Teach him to make hamburgers, and he can work at McDonald's.