[ILUG] Time Sync

[Gurpreet Kaur]

First of all, thanks for an early response. We have checked our
configuration, both udp and tcp lines are enabled. We
dont have any hosts.allow and hosts,deny files so there is no question of 
remote server being denied.We have also checked our /etc/services file,
there also both tcp and udp at port 37 are enabled.

Actually on our FTX machine, we dont have support for -a option. Infact we
dont have any option available with rdate.The man page of rdate saya


RDATE(1M)               TCP/IP Utilities                RDATE(1M)

NAME
     rdate - set system date from a remote host

SYNOPSIS
     rdate hostname

DESCRIPTION
     rdate sets the local date and time from the  hostname.   You
     must be a superuser on the local system to use this command.
     Typically, rdate can  be  inserted  as  part  of  a  startup
     script.

FTX 3.4                 TCP/IP Utilities                        1

Thanks and Regards,
Gurpreet Kaur
Center for Development of Telematics
#935, Akbar Bhawan
New Delhi-110021
INDIA

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Stephen Shirley wrote:

> Gurpreet Kaur wrote:
> 
> > 1. We have a FTX machine which does not support NTP and we want to synchronize to some other
> > machine.We want to use rdate for time synchronization. But everytime we issue a command like
> > 
> > rdate <server-name>
> > 
> > It gives us the error
> > 
> > rdate: connect: Connection refused
> > 
> > We have cheched out /etc/inetd.conf file 
> > Time command have been commented out for tcp on both sides(client as well as server). We have entry of hosts
> > in the /etc/hosts file.
> 
> RFC868 states that the time service may be run over either tcp or udp. 
> I'm guessing in this case, rdate is attempting to use udp, hence the 
> error. Try enabling the udp version of the time service in inetd.conf. 
> Also, check the /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny files, it's 
> possible the host you're trying it from is being denied due to them.
> 
> > 2. If client machine get ahead of time, how will rdate behaves?
> 
> Afaik, rdate by default will just set the client's time to that of the 
> server, regardless of whether it is behind or ahead. If you want to do 
> it in a smooth fashion instead of a (possibly large) jump, try the -a 
> flag to rdate.
> 
> Steve
>