Weird NTP/date problem

[David G. Miller]

Hi Gilboa -
   The first thing that struck me was that the "reach" column in your 
posting showed "1" for the machine that was weird and 377 for the 
"normal" box.  I checked on a couple of my systems and saw 377 so I went 
looking for what reach means.  This is from a really excellent NTP write 
up at http://www.meinberg.de/english/info/ntp.htm:

> The column *reach* shows if a reference time source could be reached 
> at the last polling intervals, i.e. data could be read from the 
> reference time source, and the *reference time source was 
> synchronized*. The value must be interpreted as an 8 bit shift 
> register whose contents is displayed as octal values. If the NTP 
> daemon has just started, the value is 0. Each time a query was 
> successful a '1' is shifted in from the right, so after the daemon has 
> been started the sequence of reach numbers 0, 1, 3, 7, 17, 37, 77, 
> 177, 377. The maximum value 377 means that the eight last queries were 
> completed successfully. The NTP daemon must have reached a reference 
> time source several times (reach not 0) before it selects a preferred 
> time source and puts an asterisk in the first column.

So unless you just restarted ntp on machine B, ntp has only gotten to 
the reference time sources once each.  If it stays at 1, I'm guessing it 
means ntpd is restarting for some reason each time it tries to set the time.

Not a fix but some things to check.

Cheers,
Dave (2cpu DaveAtFraud)