ntpd failed to start

[Alexey Fadyushin]

It seems that you have some kind of network problem which prevents 
'ntpdate' (the program which runs at the moment indicated by the 
message "Synchronizing with time server")
from working correctly at the time when it runs during the
boot process. At some later stage of boot process tne network settings
are reconfigured and new settings allow ntpdate to work, so you could
start ntpd service manually after login.
I think that you could have problems with name resolution (for example,
you specify NTP servers by their DNS names and use local DNS server
which starts after the NTP service), or your firewall settings may
prevent NTP traffic to flow at that stage of boot process.
If you internet connection is not permanent, it is possible that at
the time of starting of ntpd service the network connection stills not
established.
Also note that ntpdate program may write some message to syslog
explaining the problem
which occurred during time sinchronization.

Alexey Fadyushin
Brainbench MVP for Linux.
http://www.brainbench.com


>From: "ifernandes" <ifernandes hotmail com> 
>To: <redhat-list redhat com> 
>Subject: ntpd failed to start 
>Date: Fri Feb 27 18:12:02 2004 
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Hi everybody, 
> 
>I am facing a strange behavior with ntpd and need help!!!...
>I have defined on my /etc/ntp/step-tickers my internal ntp server.
>When I start the ntpd daemon, the message "Synchronizing with time server" appears before the ntpd message and boths are started successfully.
> 
>However when I reboot the server the ntp fail to start just on the first message "Synchronizing with time server   [FAILED]", and then the ntpd is not >started. 
>After the boot process  I log on as root and do a "service ntpd start" and everything start to work...
>The ntpd was added with the chkconfig command and is started after the network...
> 
>Any clue of what could be hapenning ?
> 
>Thanks 
>ifernandes