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NTP Glitch Reverts Clocks Back To 2000

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-about-that-time-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It seems a glitch of some sort wreaked havoc on some NTP servers yesterday, causing many machines to revert to the year 2000. It seems the Y2K bug that never happened is finally catching up with us in 2012."

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Not an NTP glitch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was a problem with the USNO servers (I.e. tick.usno.navy.mil, tock.usno.navy.mil etc.) being rebooted and starting to hand out the wrong time. Very few downstream startum 2 NTP servers should have accepted such a large skew, although they may have lost accuracy.

    Amusingly I happen to work with an ex. USNO NTP admin, so I'll be sure to take the piss for the rest of the week.

    1. Re:Not an NTP glitch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes and no.
      This article is interesting: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884776
      Summary: Windows can do it, but before Server 2008 it defaulted to not doing any sanity checks.
      Since 2008 it still is quite generous, allowing 48 hour jumps.
      If you don't like it you have to adjust the value in the registry.
      I guess it still shows that the Internet was an afterthought for Microsoft...

  2. Properly configured hosts not impacted by jaredmauch · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you saw this problem, your NTP time sources were not properly configured and diverse.

    Consider using the NTP pool and not relying on so few sources to properly sync your time. Read 5.3.3 and 5.3.4 from http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/SelectingOffsiteNTPServers for help to correct your NTP setup.