Maybe redundant maybe not but I use tick.usno.navy.mil and tock.usno.navy.mil. The US Navy is the official time keepers of the military and therefore all things are sync'd with them and in turn these public servers. That includes GPS. Doesn't get much more accurate than that.
As an aside I don't see what the big deal is. The public pool has been around for how long? It's been the default in Mandrake since 9.0-ish(?).
I remember hearing a few years ago that the folks who ran tick and tock asked that only second-tier time servers sync to them, and that all the "leaf nodes" sync to a second-tier server. That's why I don't use tick or tock any more.
I remember hearing a few years ago that the folks who ran tick and tock
asked that only second-tier time servers sync to them, and that all the "leaf
nodes" sync to a second-tier server.
I heard something similar a while back, but in this case, the guilty
parties were sticking ntpdate(1) into a cronjob and pointing it
at the time servers, having it run at the top of every hour. =-(
In response, I posted the following notice. I'm reproducing it here
(without updates or corrections), in the hopes that may be helpful:
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: ntpdate from cron -- DON'T DO THAT!
From: "N. Thomas" <nthomas@cise.ufl.edu>
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 18:51:24 -0500
Contrary to what you may have heard, ntpdate does not keep your system
clock synced. Also ignore the foolish recommendations to run ntpdate
from a cron job.
ntpdate works like date(1), but it sets your clock's time to that of an
ntp server (or servers) instead of having it specified by you.
If you want to keep your clock in sync use ntpd -- that's what it was
designed for. It uses many sophisticated algorithms and statistical
methods to accomplish this. After some time, it can even figure out how
"bad" your system clock is (i.e. its drift) and compensate for it, even
if your network connection goes out.
Unfortunately, some people, instead of taking the time to read the ntp
documentation and writing a proper ntp.conf file, took the easy route
and started running ntpdate from cron.
This caused two problems, firstly it did not keep very good time:
immediately after you called ntpdate, your clock would begin to drift
again. And more importantly, every hour or so, the ntp servers were
being affected by a "thunderclap" effect, the result of everybody
putting:
0 * * * */usr/local/bin/ntpdate
or something similar into their crontab files. The ntp daemon does not
do this as it randomizes the time it waits between queries.
For this reason, Dr. Mills (ntp author) has deprecated ntpdate, and
indeed, he will be removing it completely from a future release.
In addition to helping those without a handy ntp server, pool.ntp.org
actually helps to minimize "wear and tear" on the popular NTP servers.
Congratulations are in order to Mr. von Bidder for coming up with this
great system.
time.apple.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, you do. Just use time.apple.com.
Re:time.apple.com (Score:3, Informative)
As an aside I don't see what the big deal is. The public pool has been around for how long? It's been the default in Mandrake since 9.0-ish(?).
Re:time.apple.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:time.apple.com (Score:4, Informative)
I remember hearing a few years ago that the folks who ran tick and tock asked that only second-tier time servers sync to them, and that all the "leaf nodes" sync to a second-tier server.
I heard something similar a while back, but in this case, the guilty parties were sticking ntpdate(1) into a cronjob and pointing it at the time servers, having it run at the top of every hour. =-(
In response, I posted the following notice. I'm reproducing it here (without updates or corrections), in the hopes that may be helpful:
In addition to helping those without a handy ntp server, pool.ntp.org actually helps to minimize "wear and tear" on the popular NTP servers. Congratulations are in order to Mr. von Bidder for coming up with this great system.
Thomas