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Do You Have The Time?
RetroGeek writes: "This ZDNet article talks about the perils of the PC clock. And (something I did not know) that Windows XP and Mac OS X both automatically get a time stamp from MicroSoft and Apple respectively. At any rate, my home firewall gets the time every hour from the NIST servers, then each of the machines on my LAN query the time server daemon on the firewall. That way all my home network machines have the same time. And latency on the LAN is next to zero. Now if I can only get my VCR connected. Anyone else running a time server?" So how do you get the time?
What about older windows machine when most people didn't have the net? I assume then that it didn't get a timestamp from microsoft. When did they change this over cause my old windows 98 machine always got the time wrong.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
There are VCRs on the market now (have been for the past few years) that will set their own time (either radio based, or based on signals from TV stations).
As for my PC, I use time.nist.gov
I use cron scripts and rdate to distribute my time syncronization.
Now if there was just a way to get a cron script that could sync the time on my phone.
First thing I do with a box is stick that in crontab. Run it once every day or two and job done. No real need for a local time server and LAN boxes synching from that; bandwidth usage is negligible and there are enough time servers for load not to be a problem.
I look at a clock. Or maybe my (wind-up) wristwatch.
Sheesh. Geeks. If it ain't digital, it ain't.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Running ntpd on linux as an ntp server and automachron on windoze to keep their clock in sync.
Ok, this is bad. A somewhat critical state of the OS is dependant on a blindly connected service. Please tell me the time server is authenticated fully and unbreakably. Hah.
Just wait for
1) MS to implement expirable licenses on all software
2) someone to break the authentication service
3) IP spoofing of the time server to a clock set 100 years in the future when everyones time based license has expired
The result is instant crippling of all MS licenses!
Personally I arbitarialy declare the firewall as having the same time and use cron to update everyone from that. Since latency between machines is almost equal, everybody is out by the same amount.
Before anybody thinks it is silly to keep clocks tightly synchronised, try running NFS without it and you'll run into no end of problems. Even as little as one second will cause errors with make. The key is that all clocks must read the same, not that they need to be correct.
Oh, and don't get fooled into thinking you can accurately synchronise against those atomic clocks. The algorithms they use to average results make a number of incorrect assumptions that will result in you being out by a small constant amount, about as much as if you'd synchronised off an ordinary clock.
At my school, a time server is set up to keep the computers on the network within a certain range of time. I believe the purpose of this is for security, as we can't renew our kerberos tickets if our time is more than X minutes from the server's specified time.
-agent oranje.
Some VCRs including my JVC can get a time signal that is broadcasted by PBS stations via cable. It's wonderful to never have to set that puppy.Combined with ntp for my computers, and WWV for my stand alone clocks (so called 'atomic alarm clocks' I am down to one clock that I have to set - my wristwatch.
There's a nice open-source utility at Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/nettime/) that I use at work on my Windows machine.
I like it because it's simple, unobtrusive, and invisible once it's installed.
=U= "Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you"
time.org.
:)
I can even get the date too
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Go to http://www.ntp.org to get all your time-synchronisation questions answered.
.au and found out that my DCF77 receiver didn't work here...
Also for in- or near-Germany living people: http://www.dcf77.de. Wish I knew it was a german-specific service before I came to
bash$
Some newer VCRs (and therefore probably DVD players) have this feature that allows them to set their time to a time signal on a certain channel, usually public television in the US. The station transmits the time via XDS (extended data services). Maybe you could set up something with a TV card on your time server...
;-)
oh dear... too... much... hacking...
I run ntpdate every odd hour to synchronize my system clock to five NTP servers in the Bay Area. Looking at the logs, it appears that my system clock usually gains 0.13 seconds between to updates.
Besides, once every month, I save the system clock to the hardware clock. Of course, this is because I don't reboot often. I would do it more often, even at every shutdown, if I was to reboot often.
And of course, I use my system time to update everything else, like my wristwatch, my alarmclock, etc. You can find a list of time servers in your area on this page. For more information about the Network Time Protocol, look there.
I run the ntpd on my Linux box behind my firewall. All my other machines and OS installations sychronise from there. E.g. under Win2K, check out the command "net help time" - I used "net time" to specify where Win2K sychronises.
I setup my first ntp server about three days ago... and am using Automachron to sync my PC's clock (which is needed, cos it loses a few minutes every day or so). People shouldn't automatically use time.nist.gov though...the poor thing will get slashdotted. There are a ton of stratum-2 servers here.
Look at my left wrist, and see if it checks with my pc-clock. If not I set it - that is; the pc-clock.
Look a monkey!
For a few of the european hosts, we use GPS time receivers, primarily the Motorolla Oncore UT+ kits. You can get eval units of these, google around. They're nearly as easy to use, but do require a kernel config change.
It's really kind of addictive playing with time. :-) And you get spoiled by never having any clock weirdness on any of your machines...
..that the Microsoft time server was 3 minutes slow ! This was about 2 weeks ago. I checked it against both another time server, and then the UK speaking clock (dial 123 in the UK) which is synchronised with Greenwich. As a result, I disabled the time synch (right click on the time in the system tray, Adjust Date Time, Internet tab, uncheck the box). I now use the time synchronisation feature that comes with the Dynip client. :(
Since the MS time synch is enabled by default, they really should make sure their server farm has the correct time
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
"So how do you get the time?" Well, from my watch, which is calibrated to the sun dial out front.
Speaking of NIST Internet Time Service ...
a simple
public domain ITS client for Windows
can be found over at the
NIST Time and Frequency Division Web Site.
There's plenty of handy documentation, too.
I have this nifty little sync program for Win9X boxes (2K doesn't work with it, and there's no plans for an update). It called into the USAC (Atomic Clock) hourly and synced my machines directly to time. It was a great little program, some from company with a name like "JediTech" or something similar. Now if I could only find a version (or similar program) that worked under 2K......
--Reverend Raven
Desperate days demand dire deeds.
I run ntpd on my firewall machine and set it to broadcast over the local network once a minute.
The local machines run a small (64k) utility called K9 which listens for the broadcast and sets the time accordingly. I found most time clients for windows were very large and much to bloated for what I wanted to do. K9 works perfectly. There is even source code available for your favorite flavour of *NIX
If you use UNIX, just set up ntpd. You are often
requested to inform the providers of stratum one
servers that you use them. Since most NTP
servers discriminate against end-user DSL and
cablemodem services, i offer a "stratum 2" service
for these people.
All told, all my friends have the time to a few
milli-seconds, a vast improvement over what the
local telco can offer.
As for Windoze, i know nothing, but believe
NTPD is somewhat functional.Time is very
important for UNIX and all secure services.
I don't see an internet option on Win2K
UNFORTUNATELY, the clients in Windows and Mac OS aren't ideal. They share two problems: First, they may not synchronize often enough.
That Coursey sure is a whinner and clearly he does little research. I took me 15 seconnds to find this at Google.
To control the number of seconds to wait between attempts to synchronize the system clock to an time source on the Internet using the following Windows XP...
v iders\NtpClient
Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimePro
Name: SpecialPollInterval
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: #secondsdesired default
If you're on cable or DSL, most of the upstream routers run proper NTP servers, and they're just a hop away. The bandwidth for running an NTP client is minimal.
To find the nearest NTP server, to a traceroute to a few non-local hosts. Then start at your nearest router and ping each one for a time server using something like 'ntptrace'.
Near-perfect accuracy, just a trickle of data, and your provider will thank you for using nearby machinery.
needless to say i laughed him off and went back to reading /.
Lives and careers depended on the timestamp (indirectly, of course). As you might imagine the times and dates on these PDAs are all over the, er, calendar. Up until the time I joined the project this had not been an front-burner issue, but I was brought in with the team to create a live XML-RPC interface to other systems and vendors/partners.
First thing we did was insist that the date_written timestamp would be set not at the PDA level (*shudder*) but at the point where the record entered the central SQL server. Life was good.
That is, it was good until one of the servers in the cluster lost its synch with NIST computers. Yes, this was a Windows 2000 server. *Sigh*.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
On your Red Hat Linux server/firewall/whatever (easily adapted to any NTP setup, really):
/etc/ntp/drift /var/run/ntpd.pid /var/log/ntpd
/etc/ntp/step-tickers has the IP addresses for those hosts, all one line (the Red Hat startup script uses these to set the clock at boot, in case it's WAY out of sync.):
ntp.conf:
server time.apple.com
server tick.usno.navy.mil
server tock.usno.navy.mil
# In case the network is down
server 127.127.1.0
fudge 127.127.1.0 stratum 10
broadcastdelay 0.008
authenticate no
driftfile
pidfile
logfile
and
17.254.0.27 192.5.41.40 192.5.41.41 17.254.0.26 17.254.0.31
Then on your LAN, have all your other machines use this machine as the time server. That's it! Never set a clock again.
It's important to have accurate time for many protocols, including HTTP, and also to timestamp your logs accurately for forensics and evidence.
For even more accurate and secure local timeservers, run a GPS antenna to your roof and buy one of these products.
nexus:~# ntpdate time.nist.gov
4 Jul 15:17:34 ntpdate[26989]: adjust time server 192.43.244.18 offset 0.000626 sec
nexus:~# date
Thu Jul 4 15:17:22 MST 2002
It's 3:17 PM right now. So yes, I know what time it is. Debian users can apt-get install ntp or ntpdate... it should be part of the base system in freebsd, and the NTP homepage is http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/
Sh
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Ya, With multiple PC's in the house, my windows boxs always had the correct time(sa.windows.com i think is the time server). On my unix boxes I just use rdate, "rdate -s time-nw.nist.gov" and everything is set. Was thinking about setting up a ntp server, but it would use time-nw.nist.gov also, might as well cut that step out.
-
Verizon uses thin copper on city streets... = no dsl.
With tiny personal firewall (v2, the free one) my xp box doesn't "call home" every time I search my disk or synch my time. First of all, I don't ever ever let explorer.exe connect to the outside world. Second, I change the time server to time.nist.gov under the "Internet Time" tab of the date/time cpl (check it out at http://nist.time.gov/; yes, I know nist and time are switched, but that's how they have it). Now, if nist.gov was an issue, there might be problems. But last I heard, it was degrees better than "calling home".
I don't know if one can add time servers (perhaps in the registry? never read anything about it), but it would be very nice to find out one could.
Me too.
Speaking of being on the blink... if someone would, say, drop a bomb on the MS headquarters and wipes out the master XP clock, would all our XP boxen show a blinking 12:00 in the taskbar?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Can the M$ time sync for XP be disabled, or is this just another way for them to impose Bill's vision on us all?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It was introduced in XP because the 95, 98, ME were too high in latency.
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I know several people that set their clocks ahead of time so as to make themselves think that they're running late, when in actuality, they're on time. If MS or Apple changes this time to the 'correct' time, this could cause people to actually -be- late. Imagine the dilema: you come in late, and lose your job. Is that MS's or Apple's fault for changing your time on you w/o your permission? Or your's for using their OS?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Netware 5.1 server gets time from several NTP servers (i.e. tick.usno.navy.mil, tock.usno.navy.mil, etc.) and triangulates "correct" time from averaging out the sources. (Netware actually has the most intricate and cool time synchronization system built-in because NDS depends heavily on accurate timestamps)
:)
Windows-based workstations automatically set clock to time on Netware server using Novell-supplied file client software (Client32) when they login.
Linux boxes get time from Netware server using NTP.
MacOSX laptop gets time from Apple using NTP (it's mobile & physically travels to many different networks.
btw, Microsoft has no concept of time synchronization. Throwing an NTP client into Win2K & WinXP isn't exactly what I'd call "enterprise-class time synchronization." I've struggled for years using a variety of techniques to keep clocks accurate on mid-sized Windows-based networks. Novell by _default_ synchronizes the local PC clock with the main login server. You actually have to override this feature if you want to do it yourself. It saves so much effort...
FWIW, this was originally written and
recorded by Joe Jackson, from his
excellent album "Look Sharp."
My VCR is able to auto-set its clock based on XDS data that is sent along with closed caption information.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Priceless
That song was written and performed by Joe Jackson; Anthrax covered it.
Non impediti ratione cogitationis.
djb's clockspeed
By the author of qmail. Though it doesn't get at much attention as the author's bigger projects, it is written with the same attention to efficiency, simplicity, and correctness.
I've been using Dimension 4 for years. It works fine for me, athough the program is so old now that many of the atomic clocks listed in the program no longer work. There are still plenty of available ones in my state though, so it's no big deal.
I also recently made the so-called upgrade from win 95 to 98(since microshaft no longer gives phone support for win 95 and many programs no longer support it. I got the upgrade free with the computer, but never installed it until recently,) and Dimension 4 still works fine even though it says it is only for Win 95 and NT 4.0
All these time servers are based on an atomic clock somewhere (there's a few of them, one in France I know of, or in all GPS satellites), but because time is not a constant, the time according to an atomic clock is not necessarily the current time at your location.
Due to this, don't be annoyed if your clock is a few seconds (or even minutes) out. The next time you're late for work, just politely explain to your boss that your watch isn't in the same location as his, and therefore don't share the same time.
MacOS 8.6.x already had this feature.
bash$
Interestingly, while I was waiting for my DSL installation to come through, I had my Airport set up to dial an ISP when I wanted to go online. I suppose OSX doesn't distiguinsh between always-on broadband and simple ethernet connection. Because if I didn't have the Airport connected to the internet (from some other computer) and booted my machine up, it would wait for the Airport to dial up and get the time. So that answers part of that writers question. A little annoying, but it's easy to turn off. OSX checks the time everytime you boot. Yeah, not very interesting, but whatever. Oh yeah, I think this was also in OS9.
Ok, maybe I don't. But I would like to. My 3 linux machines/servers all syncranize once an hour from 14 different time servers across the US. My other machines also syncronize everyday. My cell phone automatically gets the time from the cell service. My alarm is set by the atomic clock in Boulder, CO. Finally my wrist watch is a Timex "Internet Messagner" (It has a built in pager), it also recives the exact time from the pager service 6 times a day via "FlexTime".
Oh and my car radio clock is set by the time sent by XM Radio.
snowulf.com
The benefit with running a server like ntpd is that its always running. It'll run a query once every 5 minutes or so, and rather than just simply resetting your clock, it'll statistically derive the real time accounting for network lag and randomness and all of that. It'll reliably get better-than-a-millisecond accuracy, given a few days of this. Plus, it can use the same mechanism to detect drifts and inaccuracies in your PC's own clock, and tweak the kernel to compensate. Plus, if you have a pool of peer machines, they can help eachother detect drift more quickly (without having to resort to longterm statistical analysis).
For these reasons, I run ntpd on most of my machines, rather than some set-and-exit cron job.
Paranoid
Bwaahahahahaa.
"The default--and unchangeable-- synchronization interval for Windows XP is one week."
This isn't entirely true: while there is no way to change the synch setting in Windows using the UI, but a simple change of a number in the Registry will give the desired results:
To change the interval that Windows updates the time using the internet time servers via regedit, navigate to:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services \W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
2. Select "SpecialPollInterval"
3. Change decimal value from 604800 to a different value in seconds. i.e.: 172800 (2 Days) or 86400 (1 Day) and so on.
"When all else fails, there's always delusion." -Conan O'Brien
The default configuration works with a dialup.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Two steps:
$ rdate -s time.nist.gov # set system timefrom time server,
$ hwclock --systohc # then set hardware clock
clock.psu.edu is a timeserver too.
Windows machines:
1. nettime or
2. (if XP) let the OS sync it by itself.
Unix machines:
xnetd. I forgot to turn it off when I setup my two machines over the last two weeks with Linux and this thread reminded me of it. Went to SuSE and 5 minutes later I had the daemon enabled and running. The SuSE tutorial is at http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/xntp.html .
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Just yesterday at work I was talking with a researcher about this.. he was showing me an NTP server he made, using two DGPS units and some embedded ethernet controllers.. he said the accuracy on it was about 40 nanoseconds from UTC..
:)
That should probably be suitable I think
http://truetime.net sells some rack GPS-based NTP Servers too.. but I don' know the price.
My older Mac runs AutoClock, which computes the mean deviation between logins to NIST, then automatically adjusts the clock whenever it drifts out of sync. Neat.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
"The people who use NIST's Internet Time Service range from Windows XP and Mac System X users"
If they're not informed enough to call it Mac OS X (and the last time apple used "System" was before Mac OS 8 came along... which was a longggggggggg time ago), then I don't trust the rest of the article, either. So I don't care, and I'm going to use Network Time to set my clock right now, just to spite that stupid Microsoft Windowed TP-user.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
My JVC VCR gets the time off of the cable. It sets itself automaticlly. One of the main reasons for purchasing it.
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
it doesnt have to get it from micrsoft if u go into the settings in windows xp pro u can get them from microsoft or an atomic clock i think in denver. its a .gov site so i use that lol.. but both are the same time to the second
Holy shit, I had no idea - thanks! (mod parent UP)
I have a related problem: I'm the author of an open source client for a chess server. Now, in chess, time is an important thing, since each player is given a certain amount of time for the game and when that runs out, he loses. The problem is, how do you account for lag when sending moves over the internet?
In the young days of internet chess, there was no compensation for lag, so whoever had a faster connection, had the advantage. Nowadays, most chess servers have implemented what is called timestamp or timeseal. While the specific algorithms differ, the idea is the same - the client somehow authenticates itself against the server and tells it that it's a trusted client. From this point, it simply counts the time it takes for the user to make his move and sends the time along with the move.
The problem with that is that the authentication method and algorithm have to be kept proprietary, since otherwise, anyone can claim to be a trusted client and always say that it took him 0 seconds to make the move. My problem with that, is that I don't like an important part of my code to be closed source (since I agreed not to release it when I was given the method/algorithm description).
The question is, is it possible, and if so, how, to implement move timestamping which would not rely on the server trusting the client? Perhaps by obtaining the time in an encrypted form from a (custom made) NTP server and then sending it to the chess server, which can talk to the NTP server and have it decrypt the time?
If I could come up with such a protocol, I would suggest it to the server guys, who would gladly implement it, since it's much more secure (since the client doesn't need to be trusted anymore, there's no point in hacking it), and my life would be much easier, since I wouldn't need to distribute obfuscated, proprietary pieces of software along with my open software.
My firewall config had a Linux box on the outside with a crossover cable into a Linksys. The perimeter firewall has now come inside. I run NTP on 6 Linux boxes and used to run w32time on an NT Server.
Only problem is, I could never get the firewall (or any single NTP client) to become a server for the rest of the network, so my boxes are not very polite right now. I've read tons of docs and google hits, and they all seem to indicate that once an NTP client syncs, it will also become a server. Not so here.
What, if anything needs to be done to make a sync'ed NTP client also act as a server? Thanks..
Intelligent Life on Earth
In MAC OS X you can change the time server polling frequency by modifing a value in the Net Info Domain:
o nf opt.htm
Open the Net Info Manager--->authenticate as root (unless you have enabled it) clicking on the lock on the down-left corner-->choose "config" on the root level("\")-->choose "ntp"-->choose "server" property and modify the minpoll and maxpoll values to obtain different poll times.
The meaning of that values and (above all) the configuration of the ntp daemon (which is used by OS X to "keep the time updated") are explained in this document:
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/ntp_spool/html/c
OS X can also do as time server for all the network attached client!!
Alb3
I don't know who originally wrote that, but wipe the foam off your mouth mate.
It's a shame when someone with an obviously strong command of the English language, and the intelligence needed to write such an article, produces such a paranoid piece of alarmist BS.
Personally alarm bells start to sound in my head whenever I read an article with the word meme or dogma included once too often.
Easy:
/]# cat /etc/cron.hourly/timesync
[root@aragorn
rdate -s ns.coop.net&
Just search google for "Stratum 1" servers and look for your timezone in the list.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
For those Windows users out there (I know, I know) who don't have access to a time server on their private network, I'd suggest http://www.worldtimeserver.com to set your clocks with. I don't believe their app. takes network latency into consideration, but its still close enough. Personally, I have quite a problem with time (at The University of Akron clocks can differ by up to 15 minutes between rooms) and I usually set every time keeping piece off my computer so that I'm always within 1 second or so of true time. I only wish large institutions, such as universities, would work harder to synchronize their clocks.
I poke a pencil into my eraser, draw a circle around it, and then open the blinds. Isn't that how all you guys do it too?
I use NASA's ntp server. ntp.nasa.gov
OS X Date/Time has an option to use ntp and you can set which server. ntp.apple.com is the default but I prefer to use a server where time is very important for everything they do. NASA seems to fit the bill.
Other ntp servers like any military server are probably similarly effective. I wouldn't necessarily trust a commercially owned and run ntp server though.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I have 2 PCs networked at home: a Pentium running FreeBSD and an iMac running OS X.
I have the iMac using Apple's built-in NTP client that gets the time from a local NTP server (A University) when I'm online (which is only usually once a day).
I use timed to synchronize the iMac and the PC. It's much easier to setup, and I could never get the ntp server on OS X to transmit time (it always thought it was stratum 16 - the furthest from a clock you can get). timed isn't as accurate as ntp but it works fine for me.
My firewall runs ntpd to sync its time with one of the public time servers in Canada. All of my Unix-ish machines run ntpd to synchronize with that; Windows machines run Tardis on startup to sync.
A trick to find nearby time servers (other than looking at a list): run ntptrace on a nearby, well-administered Unix machine. Find the last machine that's inside the organization--that will be the one they sync with the outside world. Run ntpq on that machine and type peers. You'll see a list of the NTP servers that it queries. Put some of those in your /etc/ntp.conf and you're good.
"...my home firewall gets the time every hour from the NIST servers,..."
Don't use stratum one servers for your home network. It's wasteful and unnecessary. Use a stratum 2 or higher server or your ISP's server.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
- time.windows.com
- time.nist.gov
Take a wild guess which one I chose...But if you want more choices than that:
This allowed me to set my own choice of NTP server, and then synced from it. Like many other MS 'features', theThis article inspired me to do some dumpster-diving in the Registry... Import this key/value:
default can be changed, if you know how...
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I thought "MAC compatible" and calling "iMac" a company were amusing. "System X" sounds kind of mysterious and cool. "System X.1.5" not so much.
conf t
ntp server 192.5.41.40
Proper etiquette demands that an end-user use stratum 2 or better. As was mentioned in another post, most ISP routers are actually stratum 2 or stratum 3 servers. These are *A LOT* faster (in my experience about 1/20th the latency) than public stratum 1 servers.
Of course for redundancy's sake, you shouldn't rely solely on your ISP's servers, as they likely boil down to a single stratum 1 server (equals a single point of failure), as can be verified with ntptrace. There are a handful of public stratum 2 servers out there as well to help in your quest for redundancy.
I have a GPS based time server on my LAN but my
ISP has NTP time on all of it's routers to you
can point to the closest router of theirs and
get the correct time.
'nuff said.
From Verizon. On my cell phone.
Connecting to NIST using SNTP.
Resolved address for NIST (192.43.244.18).
Received time (ping 63 ms), error -1 ms.
New time: Thursday, July 04, 2002 19:34:15.
AboutTime
(win32)
I use BeatNik Internet Clock. It grabs time updates from nist at regular intervals, and is also a skinable clock application. I recommend it!
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft actually lets you select the NIST to synchronize your time with in Windows XP..never knew them to allow you to use something outside the 'collective'...
Correct me If I'm Wrong, but is the big errors in PC clocks not due to the BIOS only storing the Hours & minutes, not the seconds ? Each reboot would discard the seconds ( average loss 30 seconds each reboot ? ) MS OS's being what they are, a large anomaly can build up really quickly. The clock is a silicon crystal for fsck's sake. It keeps time.
...to listen to me whine... about nothing and everything all at once?
In Unix: "where is the configuration file for application fooapp and what format is it in?" Three seconds of looking at "man fooapp" says: "FILES USED ... /usr/etc/fooapp.conf ... SEE ALSO ... fooapp.conf(5)". Yay.
In Windows: "how do I configure fooapp since the app itself doesn't provide me a way to do it?" Windows help is no good. So, run "regedit" and do a search for "fooapp". 45 seconds go by as it's "searching". Darn, not what I'm looking for. F3. 20 more seconds. F3. F3. F3. F3. Is this it? Probably not. F3. F3. F3. 10 more seconds. F3. F3. Damn. Do google search for "fooapp registry". Three minutes later: "though it's not documented, and we're not sure if it'll break your computer, it looks like you should change the key [300 characters of text] from 0 to 1 for some reason".
Yes, I'll take Unix any day.
the key won't affect the next, but the one after that will read this value to determine the time
for the one after that.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
actual time: Thu Jul 4 16:53:53 PDT 2002
If you use Windows, Analogx.com has a good internet time sync software program. Other wise, the best/complicated/geeky way is to get a GPS reciever that can interface with a PC and has a script that polls it for the time, updates the clock, and shares it with local computers with a nero zero lat connection. You should be good constantly within a second on all your pc's to GPS time.
It's highly configurable by batch file or commandline (it's a commandline tool in a windows world - which is much better for something you want to be unobtrusive) and just plain works.
cmdtime (and some other stuff)
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
net time /help
When an Arab kills a man who is trespassing on his land, it's terrorism.
When an Israeli kills a man after trespassing on his land, he becomes the first Prime Minister of Israel, a hero on the scale of George Washington, and even a University named after him.
When a Serb tortures prisoners of war, it's a war crime.
When an Israeli tortures prisoners of war, the US government sends his State another $3 billion in aid.
When an American declares that the Constitution is "under God", he is a good God-fearing Christian.
When a Muslim declares that his beliefs are "under God", he is a fundamentalist zealot terrorist.
When most developed nations believe in justice and the rights of man, they agree to form international criminal courts.
When America claims to believe in justice and the rights of men, it attempts to sabotage attempts at individual justice, by claiming that US soldiers and commanders should be exempt from such justice.
Please, before posting on an American board, remember the double standards. Only Zionists are allowed to bomb hotels, and only Americans are allowed to bomb weddings. Clear?
Right now I'm doing research in very high precision time synchronization for very large numbers of very small things. My lab does work in sensor networks -- get a tiny little computer with a few sensors and a radio, sprinkle thousands of them out over a building or a battlefield or a forest. Have the network tell you where the fire started, where the enemy is lurking, which light bulb needs to be replaced, or a thousand other things.
You need very time sync to do lots of this stuff -- to track motion, for example. Our current testbed times the flight of sound to tell how far apart things are, and for that we need accuracy on the order of 10 microseconds between clocks.
My research right now centers around a new time sync scheme, called Reference Broadcast Synchronization, which in a recent study I showed is almost an order of magnitude more precise than NTP under the same conditions -- 5 microseconds between a group of nodes with a userspace implementation, and down to 1 microsecond in the in-kernel implementation (which is the resolution of the clock! I'll do better when I have a clock that ticks more than once a microsecond.)
NTP, even under "optimal" conditions -- very high query rate to a stratum 1 GPS-steered clock in our lab--- did no better than 50 microseconds. When we introduced high levels of congestion on the network, NTP degraded by a factor of 30 while RBS was almost unchanged.
Of course, NTP is still a fantastic protocol, and much better than trying to apply RBS to the Internet (which is basically impossible). But for tiny nodes that need very tight time sync, I say, we can do better
Some recent papers you might like are here, including
- "Fine Grained Network Time Sync using Reference Broadcasts" -- the original RBS paper
- "Wireless Sensor Networks: A New Regime for time synchronization" -- my argument as to why NTP shouldn't be used for sensor networks
- "Locating nodes in time and space: A case study" -- description of our testbed that is capable of localizing objects down to 1cm by measuring time of flight of sound, combined with RBS time sync.
It's funny, I'm sitting in the lab right now, tinkering with the testbed when this article should come up.Comment removed based on user account deletion
Everyone is forgetting. The time clocks are controlled by Man. "The" Man, in fact. What happens if time seems like it's slowing down? If everyone is syncing to the same clock, everyone will think reality is no longer real. Farmer's Almanacs are handy to know sunrise and sunset times, moonrise, etc. But what happens if they are "off" by a few minutes, according to the "official" atomic time? Add a second here, add a half-second there, before you know it the official "time" is caught back up with where it "seems" to belong. I wonder what could cause time to seem like it's flowing slower. One answer: a slowing of the Earth's rotation. Keep your eyes on the clocks. ALL of them.
What's a second? An hour? A day?
It has much more to do with
the Earth's rotation than with cesium.
I mean, geeze. I know some people who aren't the best with directions, but you're the only one I've ever heard of that needs to know the Latitude and Longitude of his house to get back... Or is this just in case the foundation shifts?
SIG: HUP
... is that it does not at all take into account the Timecube.
All must heed the divine word of the self-proclaimed "Wisest Human ever to live on earth"!!
man rdate
- grunby
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Radioshack has a wall clock that checks for (i forget the exact title) a radio signal that the Gov and NASA use to synchronize their time.
Click here!
noonch
No sig for you!!
Here's a "me too".
I've been running anachron on several flavors of windows for the last few years. Can set it to load on start and sync automatically, or launch and set manually. Never segfaulted; does just what it says. After a sync, the systime matches my bsd boxen running nntpd. Good Stuff.
Once the clock is synchronized, why rely on a relatively imprecise crystal to beat the drum? The 60hz AC line frequency is more accurate, or so i've been told.
The time on your cdma phone is the most accurate civilan time available. Bother the manufactures to expose the interface
Out-freaking-standing! Give that guy a 5 please, Mr/Miss/Mrs Moderator. Works for me. I just checked and it's within about 0.010 seconds of my old time server.
How long would it take a woodchuck to chuck wood, if a woodchuck could chuck wood ?
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
I keep my PC clock at work set ahead about 15 minutes
-Keeps me early / on time for meetings
-Gives the illusion that its that much closer to quittin time
And since make is using file-stamps, this condition would be pretty much met by the clock that controls the fs where the data is stored. If there is more than one clock involved, then this becomes an issue.
The idea of synchronising clocks is that by being accurate, they will be "in step" with once another.
Someone compiling things on a computer where the standalone clock is used for both the fs and the system clocks.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I remember hearing that NIST did that shortly before Y2K.
In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?
I can't speak for windows machines, but when novell servers syncronize time, it actually accelerates the rate at which time passes until the times match rather than just jumping to the correct time so it can take a couple minutes to make up a big difference. I guess this prevents timestamps on files and such from getting screwed up too much.
To listen to me whine
About nothing and everything all at once
I am one of those
Melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone no doubt about it
Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
I'm just stoned
I went to a shrink
To analyze my dreams
She says it's lack of sex that's bringing me down
I went to a whore
He said my life is a bore
And quit my whining 'cause it's bringing her down
Grasping to control
So you better hold on
Green Day - Dookie - Basket Case.lyr
OK--I just turned this thing on to the dot gov nist server on my redhat box through the date/time utility. I immediately got 4 hits on my firewall-from my own dynamic IP from this internet session! Wazzup with that?
I turned the thing off for now. I also got several hits immediately on port 123 from the gov server, and within 1 more would have triggered an immediate "deny" rule. Howz this werke again?
Here's how I get and set the time:
date -u -s ` telnet 131.107.1.10 13 |grep UTC |cut -b16-23 `;hwclock --systohc
-- Stephen
I don't think its that important to have time synchronized to the second. Cause lets be honest here, how many people do you think will have their clocks all set to the exact same time. I guarantee theres quite a large buffer zone for your clocks.
Plus whats the point in having your clock the same as some supercomputer stationed in some government lab, when everyone else has their clock offset by seconds or minutes?
I've always called up the time service, then set my watch accordingly. ... BEEP"
"Good Evening at the tone the time will be
Repeated ad nausem
So I wrote a script for my computer to call up this service and listen for the time then set itself accordingly. Try it - (517)487-1212
Why not use ntpd?
Is it a security thing? There was a hole last year I think.
ntp tries to compensate for latency on the network, and you usually have two stratum 2 time servers on a decent sized network to triangulate between. At work we just use a single stratum 3 server (the main NFS server). But it uses two stratum 2 servers (tick and tock
rdate with cron would work on Unix, but what about you're Mac OS 9 and Windows clients? Plus isn't it easier to just use the ntpd that's usually installed by default?
IIRC, This can be done on any system that system that supports adjtimex() . It's very handy, but not really new.
Here's the screenshot.
Plus, it's coded by some guy at Microsoft. :
What I'm wondering is... Will any GPS work, or is this is a specific feature of your GPS? I know that GPS uses very accurate timing to get its information, but I've never seen a way of getting it from a GPS. (I have a Garmin GPS 3 {Plus | Pro} here, a pretty common model.)
Although, now that I think of it, my GPS has one slot on the back, that can be used for either power or an external data link. If you ask me, it's a STUPID design -- the one time you'd actually want to use external power would be... when you had it connected to a computer. (I don't suppose there's a "hack" to run power and data into it at once?)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
After seeing this post, I emailed him. Here is the text of it:
2 24236 =thread=99 . I'd
Dear Prof Mills
If you noticed a dramatic increass in traffic to the NTP website, I can tell you why. Slashdot, the geek oriented website, ran a feature article on it. (It's currently the top listed one). You can get to it here -->
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/04/
appreciate any thoughts you have on the matter
~Mark ________
[last name erased when posting]
- - - - - - - - - - -
His response:
Mark,
Amazing how disinformation goes round and round. Try reading
comp.protocols.time.ntp.
Prof. Mills
The link he referred to was news:comp.protocols.time.ntp
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Another point is that it's unnecessary to update more often than daily except for the most exacting situations. Do you really need to keep your clocks synchronized to within milliseconds? I've found daily updates against a time server (which is sync'd to my ISP's NTP source) via a cron job running 'rdate' is good enough to keep my systems synced to within a second.
The other nice thing about this aproach is that it's easy to toss the Windows equivalence of 'rdate' into the startup scripts managed by Samba, so whenever a Windows box comes onto the network it's also synced.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
For Windows you can get ntp daemons but I find that, if something new appears in their system tray, users will fiddle with and break it every time. I use Samba and MS Windows networking built-in time sync, put in a startup script so it syncs on every boot. Clock drift on any modern computer is going to be negligible even if you're only syncing once every day or two.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Just load netinfo manager and look for /config/ntp. From there you can use whatever server you want.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
in mac os x, you just un-check using a network time server. Apple makes it easy to do.
when in doubt, use a mac!!
Nice...
OT: WTF with no manpage for ntptrace (Redhat 7.2)? or info?
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
I have a Solaris Time Server getting the time every hour, and my LAN gets the time from the Solaris box....everything works nice-nice
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Ph.D. thesis? Who cares...
...(c'mon, I know you're out there), use AnalogX Atomic TimeSync and set it to get the time from time-b.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov. Cheap, Easy, Effective.
(Dear lord, my clock was a minute off! AAAAGH!)
[insert witty comment here]
Your Internet Service Provider may well offer NTP as part of your service. They may not make a big deal of it, but it's probably available if you search their web pages or ask. I found a list of my ISP's NTP servers in their FAQ.
The advantage to using an officially provided host for NTP service is that it's less likely to disappear out from under you. One you hunt down on your own may be a temporary machine, or may be subject to change without notice.
A handy source of human-readable time (claiming 300-400 msec acccuracy) can be found at www.time.gov. It puts up a java applet with a ticking digital clock. This can be useful when you need to set something manually within a second or two, perhaps for later refinement via a synchronization protocol such as ntp.
Sigmund
And it would be great if you could submit changes to NTP for the next version release that could improve it to the accuracy that you claim.
I know I would appreciate that a lot! (Much better than starting up another project and having people to switch over to a new system of doing things...)
Except that ISPs rarely provide time servers
They don't? I'll grant that I've never seen an ISP advertise their time server, but I've usually been able to either track one down by browsing their web pages, or, worst case, get the host info by emailing support. Of course, I do tend to use geek-friendly ISPs when I can, but I'd assume that most slashdotters would gravitate towards the geek-friendly ISPs. I'd strongly suggest you ask your ISP before assuming that they don't provide NTP servers. Chances are near 100% that your ISP uses NTP, at least internally.
I use a freeware utility that checks my POP server for new messages, and also keeps my clock up to date.
See SyTinem
For Linux I use NTPDATE and run a cron job a few times a day to keep it on track.
Works for me!
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
At an old job of mine, they were trying to get me to evaluate GPS-based NNTP servers. Being a security admin, I wasn't terribly interested in the prospect.
They wanted their own root level time server that synced off of satellite-delivered time, and the server would be unavailable to anyone outside the corporate LAN.
It occured to me that unless you're running some sort of application that requires time accuracy to the millisecond or greater at all times, you're perfectly fine syncing your enterprise from a tier-3 time server that syncs off of a public NNTP server from the internet. Should you lose internet connectivity, the thing to keep in mind is that time does not mysteriously stop until the network is restored. The time-sync decay for your typical NNTP server is a couple milliseconds a day if it's unable to refresh...you're still getting VERY freakin accurate time during this period off of your own server. This concept is amazingly hard to convey to a middle manager with a budget he thinks he needs to waste.
I finally convinced them this was a waste of money and they should send me to SANS instead.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Gawsh, it must be awful living in a mind where milli-seconds are considered to imprecise.
...and I've always wondered about this... why can I buy a digital watch for $10 that keeps better time than a Sun Starfire 15K? Or pretty much any other high end system for that matter? I mean, I would think for $1.5 Mill they could put a decent clock in the damn thing. For that matter, why does my desktop lose time so badly... I just don't get it.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Leitch supply equipment to the broadcast industry. It is vital for accurate timecodes to be used throughout a TV studio - for everything from editing to telling the audience the right time. Most broadcasters will use their own dedicated GPS driven Time Server that resides in their central equipment room. Leitch make a one of these. Check it out here .... I use the Leitch timeserver at leitch.com for my ntpdate on my linux box - as well as Mac OS X.
My pc gets it's time set via PBS. Take a bt848 tv capture card capable of reading the "extended data services" line of video, bit of C and you can get a semi accurate time source.
- MbM
My VCR gets its time from the TV signal. Don't most videos have this now?
I use one of my machines like a VCR, as it has a TV Tuner board in it and Cyberlink's PowerVCR. From anywhere, anytime, I can VNC in, and hit the TitanTV website, click on a show name, and it'll set to record...
:-)
BUT, my clock has to be perfect if I don't want to pad my recordings (i.e. to record two shows in succession)
My video box is running Win2k and I turned on the NTP service, as described by this PDF. Now as long as the TV station is running at the right time....
If the Israelis lay down their arms, there is no more Israel.
Well, for one thing, NTP has the year 2036 problem. Additionally, unless it's been fixed in the meantime, NTP has trouble with leap seconds. Until those two things are fixed, why bother using NTP? DJB's TAICLOCK protocol and clockspeed and taiclockd daemons seem to be a better choice.
:: "I am non-refutable." --Enik the Altrusian ::
Well you COULD hack your registry, yes.
:)
Or, you could just click into the field in your Internet Time dialog box (where it has time.windows.com and time.nist.gov) and type in the NTP server you'd like to use and click Update Now. Pointed it to my firewall and it worked fine. No sense in doing something the hard way. Especially if you're the pinnacle of laziness like me.
---
"how can the same street intersect with itself? i must be at the nexus of the universe!" - cosmo kramer
I have a top of the range vcr - well it was when I bought it anyway :-)
I used to think the fact it picked up the date and time over the airwaves was pretty great - until it got it wrong, insisisting it's 8am when it's 8pm and I discovered there was no manual way to set the clock...
Oh well, thank goodness for Tivo - well except when it gets its knickers in a twist over channels and screws up recording Band of Brothers :-(
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
NTP from a University to my firewall and then
my Novell server reads the time from the firewall
using a cheap shareware NLM I found using Google.
I note that on the page you are pointing to, the microsecond accuracy is described as "nominal". In other words, it isn't actually that accurate.
A purpse-made GPS receiver for time server applications is available, but costs rather more.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
As mentioned, Kerberos, NFS and others need synchronized time. Even if you're not using these having servers show the same time helps with monitoring services and with intrusion detection.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Got a linux box which does nat for my DSL. /set /yes in the domain logon script; for linux boxen its just NTP...
so this little box talks NTP directly with the atomic clock which is the official time base for germany, and is a samba server.
for windoze boxen: net time $server
[L]
The GSM protocol can sync your mobile phone for you. No more setting the time, no more incorrect time. But do you think they actually put it there in all networks? No... We lack it here in Sweden, the country where GSM was invented. Pretty bad I'd say.
If you want to sync to a time server it makes sense to use one close by - less latency, etc. Finding a server that is close is not that difficult.
Why do M$ boxen got to M$ to find out ? Would it be a way of letting Bill see who is running XP or whatever ?
- NTP servers located geographically close to you. Free.
- NTP protocol. Free.
Why spend 25 bucks on something which is free? I'm located in Norway. I use ntp://fartein.ifi.uio.no, and it works great.Jakob Breivik Grimstveit
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."
Hi,
Currently, I'm using a webcam that periodically
takes pictures of my solar clock - and uses
a piece of picture recognition software to
calculate the right time - which it feeds
the pc hardware clock with.
--larsw
--larsw
cronjob that does netdate every couple of hours
Qlock.. a very handy piece of software.
I have my PC clock. It's OK.
I have an Oregon Scientifc clock set by the 5Mhz NIST signal (If you have a SW radio you can hear what the audible portion sounds like at exactly 5.000 Mhz) every night, or at least it tries to set itself -- if the conditions are bad (e.g., sun eruptions), it might not be able to set itself for days & hence experiences some drift.
But as the article pointed out, the most (rediculously) accurate clocks available to ordinary folks come down from the GPS satellites. Interestingly, PCS technology *requires* incredibly accurate time syncronization & each SprintPCS tower takes continuous readings from the GPS network. So when I power up my SprintPCS phone, and the tower gives my phone the time, I am sure it is accurate to within a milisecond or so.
And related to this: The new GPS phones that are coming out: they don't work like regular GPS receivers. Rather, they need to pick up only a *single* GPS satellite. Then, by using that signal and knowing the exact time, it can triangulate with a tower and give your position. Because it only needs that single satellite, it works fine inside buildings where an ordinary GPS receiver would display nothing.
I only have a Sprint phone so I've looked into how they work. Other digital mobile phones may do the same thing, but I don't know anything about those.
I've found that a local radio station's uplink is puking on 20 MHz, so I have best luck with 5 and 15 depending on the hour.
Once I've got bash ready to whirr, and that tone comes across, I smash that enter key and concider the job done.
At the tone 9 house 45 Minutes Cooridnated Universal Time... poooiinnnnkkk!
It was right. The GPS time epoch is 0000 UT on 6-Jan-1980. Since then UTC has had 13 leap seconds inserted. This offset is available in the NAV message; maybe the version of NTP you used was ignoring that message or maybe that particular GPS receiver didn't implement that message. (Actually, buggy firmware in GPS receivers has been a problem in the past.)
I used to use an NTL cable modem and found out that they too ran an NTP server (time.cableol.net) on one of their boxes for their customers. However of the three servers I synced to it was the one that would frequently have to be dismissed because it was so out of sync itself (although it was very close).
I guess the moral is make sure you have more than one server in case one turns out to be unreliable.
If my cheapo digital watch only looses a minute every 2 months, why does the clock in a $2000 PC loose a minute every day?
Check out Brix Networks at http://www.brixnet.com Brix has a set of boxes and hardware whose sole purpose is the accurate analysis and measurement of far flung networks. The "Brix Boxes" HAVE to keep accurate time in order to measure delays between nodes... EVEN ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE PLANET! Their use of GPS, NTP, and "controlled drifting" of clocks is pretty sweet. ...some good ideas there...
You ISP does this because they tend to run cisco gear and its easier to configure it to do NTP than to set the silly clock. If you care about your logs having the right times, its a good thing to have the clock set.
conf t
ntp master
ntp server 139.130.6.25
ntp server someother.server
(Please pick something better than my ISP's upstream router, this one won't be very good for you)
Well I hope you get suscess... I request one thing, can you make Microsoft ANYHOW away from spoiling it? One post on this board amazed me and horrified, check the one mentioning how XP and time.windows.com spoiled the NTP protocol and the usenet post referenced.
I know what your up to. Your tring to build a device that will let you find that anoying cricket at night arn't you?
There are certain aspects I might try to port into NTP, for certain special cases (e.g. if you are synchronizing machines that are all on the same LAN). But the scheme doesn't actually work over the Internet in general (it requires a broadcast medium).
I'm definitely not out to replace NTP. I love NTP, I just don't think it's the right match for certain problems.
Pretty cool. I've updated my /etc/ntp.conf and /etc/ntp/step-tickers accordingly. I used to just grab random entries from the official list of public NTP servers.
Who is with me?!
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Hmm, how hard would it be to hack together something that knows how to talk Infrared, specifically how to set time.
Ah, here it is .
So much to do, so little bandwidth.
--
Try Mozilla
Isn't it nice when the rest of the world is only eight years behind Novell?
Novell has been timesyncing (to the millisecond I believe) since Netware 4.0. Servers are continuous and all clients are updated at login...
My little netware network at home makes this subject what it should be. A non-issue
That should be 10 to the -9th power!
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Garmin GPS receiver connected to the serial port, and a short script to ask it what time it is, and set system time accordingly. I'm not all that worried about the milliseconds of lag in actually setting the system time, but it doesn't require access to an ntp server, or even that my network be connected. Plus, once I programmed the data retrieval routines, what's programming one more unpacking routine for a data packet...
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Use tardis and be true to your geeky Dr. Who roots. Works in an instant and lets you set several options such as rotating servers, frequency of synchronization, limits on time change.
Its the best.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
You can't count on Verizon to provide accurate time. They're off by 55 seconds. Also, I don't know if this matters, but the towers claim to be on Atlantic Time while they're really located in the Eastern region.
A perfect example of why MS does silly things like set options for users - because they are too lazy to set options themselves. The only real error I see is that it defaults to a once per week sync and the only method for adjusting the sync gap is by altering the registry. Simple enough to find though.
Opinions Expressed by Me should be Forced on Others - PbHead
I think there's a 98 version available now too.
Look here
NetTime http://nettime.sourceforge.net/
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
Where can I find a good one? I've just set up a stratum 2 time server & it would be nice to have one in case someone actually goes to the URL (and I could put a link to www.ntp.org as well).
I don't use ntpd because I have a security and resources conservation mindset.
.. and as was mentioned earlier in this thread, you can set up samba to server up time, so windows machines aren't left out. As far as Classic MacOS's, I don't really know how you'd want to time sync those, but I'm sure that MacOSX can sync on the time retrieval machine with little to no trouble.
I just see an incredibly huge risk in having a daemon sitting the in the background that 1) does very little but in a very routine way and 2) has the unadulterated authority to change my systems clock unheeded.
rdate in a cron script is nice because it uses few network resources, running only once an hour for me while george can run it how ever often he wants, the time server I connect to while retrieving the time is IP and Name coded in my hosts file itself to prevent DNS based time attacks.
Just don't like waisting precious memory on something that sets the clock.
Would it work over the multicast backbone, or do you rely on latency being strictly proportional to physical distance?
perhaps some day an open source version will be released... we can only hope!
>Working behind the scenes, a small government agency headquartered outside of Denver
/. kiddie will be happy to split hairs with me on that.) A more accurate lead paragraph would have ended:
>operates a network of 14 servers capable of changing the operating systems on your
>PC--and millions of others--in less than a second.
Sniff... sniff... what's that I smell? Ahh, the stench of yellow journalism.
You mean that NIST can change the OS on my G4 from MacOS X to LinuxPPC? On my PIII from Win2K to Win3.1? In less than a second? Amazing! They should sell this technology to Symantec for the next version of Norton Ghost! In my world it takes several minutes at best, maybe hours ("hours would seem like days" - Spock/TWoK), to install a new OS.
Oh, you mean, they can change the TIME VALUE STORED IN THE CLOCK. Is the clock part of the OS? No, as far as I can tell the clock is part of the HARDWARE. There is some clock functionality in the OS to get to the hardware clock and to provide time services to apps, but really, the clock is a hardware device. (I'm sure some
>capable of changing the time on your PC--and millions of others--in less than a second.
Oh my god, no! NOOOOOOOOOO!
But wait a second. Doesn't he also say that WinXP syncs once a week, and OS X syncs at an unknown interval ('cos he didn't bother to research it and find out, he just looked at the UI and it doesn't say)? That means it really should say:
>capable of changing the time on your PC or Mac--and millions of others--
>in no more than a week. Unless you configure it otherwise, in which case your clock will be wrong.
OK, let's try that again: Oh my god, no! NOOOOOOOOOO!
I didn't think that the GPS satellites had the bandwidth to run a news feed.
One time Hayawatha Bray, the Boston Globe's technology columnist wrote an article about time syncing and he made the same mistake of saying NNTP when he meant NTP. Syncing time through Usenet has then become a running office joke. Can you imagine setting clocks through NNTP?
Start with posting a message to a newsgroup asking "what time is it?"
That will be followed by 5 contradictory answers and 3 entirely irrelevant responses. Each of those will each be responded to by 5 equally inaccurate flames.
Eventually, someone will mention in a posting that Hitler never wore a wristwatch, and the whole thing will be over.
Hahah! You got me there. =)
I'd mod you up but I posted in this topic already, obviously. At least I'm not the first person to make this mistake...too many damn acronyms now to keep em all straight.
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For accurate time you want a 1 PPS output. GPS chipsets and embedded modules (like that $24.95 thing that appears to be sold out) usually have that. The higher quality modules 1 PPS output is good to within a few microseconds, but the cheaper ones can be off by 25-50 microseconds.
Here is the famous W3IWI Totally Accurate Clock available in kit form from TAPR for the princely sum of $139.00 for non-TAPR-members. That's a pretty good deal--that $24.95 module was a stupendous deal and had to be some kind of surplus closeout.
I haven't carried a watch since I started carrying a pager. Now I usually have on me a PCS phone which keeps its own clock. When I went flying, I had to turn it off. When we landed, I turned it back on and it hunted around for maybe five minutes, then came up with local digital service and set its clock - to the local time zone. I figure the actual time value comes from an NTP server somewhere in the Sprint communications network, probably "first tier". I set everything else by that. What's cool is to see the VCR (which sets itself from the TV airwaves) concur with the phone's time to within a few seconds....
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.