[rhn-users] Re: NTP

[Cameron Simpson]

Please don't top-post. Reply _below_ the relevant quoted text, and trim
the irrelevant text.

On 03Nov2006 11:35, Nick Baronian <kvetch at gmail.com> wrote:
| Oops, the -p tcp was a typo on my part.
| What I am really getting at is if there is a way to have ntp work like
| some other client apps.  I want to sync to redhat's time server but I
| don't want to have a constant connection.

UDP doesn't have a "connection" at all.

| Kinda like if I was ssh'ing
| or ftp'ing into a server.  The server would be running the ssh/ftp
| service and have port 22 or 21 open but my machine would open a random
| non-priv port get my payload and then close it.
| Is NTP different because the polling is so frequent?

No, it's different because it's UDP - no connections. Think of it like
"ping", but passing time information in the packets.

If you don't want to run ntpd, which will do a good job of keeping time
with good clock behaviour (i.e. monotonic clock - no backwards time
shifts, etc), you could run the "ntpdate" command occasionally.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

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