How to make NTP work despite a high offset?

Question

Recently I have kickstarted some servers that had their time off by a month in the bios. The time in the bios said it was a random time/date in May, while it was June.

This caused NTP not to work, because NTP doesn't sync with such a high offset. How can I make sure that NTP syncs despite the offset, in this case a month, being too high?

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 19 '13 at 22:31

5

See -g option for ntpd; set in /etc/sysconfig/ntpd. (IMO, running both ntpd and ntpdate is distasteful.)

answered Sep 19 '13 at 22:31

Stefan Paletta

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On CentOS 6, I believe /etc/sysconfig/ntpd defaults to: OPTIONS="-u ntp:ntp -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g" – tgharold Sep 28 '13 at 03:51
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For this to work for me I had to use the following steps 'sudo service ntp stop' 'ntpq -gq' and 'sudo service ntp start' – Terry Horner Feb 09 '18 at 13:54

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 19 '13 at 20:35

1

For EL5 and EL6:

Start ntpdate as well.

It should be sufficient to enable them in your kickstart.

%post
chkconfig ntpdate on
chkconfig ntpd on

answered Sep 19 '13 at 20:35

Michael Hampton

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 26 '14 at 14:45

1

Running the following from the command line should force an update despite any time difference.

ntpd -gq

answered Feb 26 '14 at 14:45

Thomas Bratt

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How to make NTP work despite a high offset?

3 Answers3