ntpdate

[Andrew P.]

On 11/16/05, dick hoogendijk <dick at nagual.st> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:15:24 +0200
> Ivailo Tanusheff <i.tanusheff at procreditbank.bg> wrote:
>
> > Why you need to do this?
> > Your system is not fully operationl in the time you try to run
> > ntpdate. Just edit your /etc/ntp.conf to connect to some time
> > servers. Per example mine is:
>
> [cut very nice example]
>
> Thank you. I
> You are probably right. I'll get rid of ntpdate in rc.conf.
> I have two timeservers at the moment. I will look for some more in the
> Netherlands. Yours are to far away ;-)


Last time I checked ntpd docs there was no way
to tell ntpd to set the time to correct at once at
startup. Imagine that you've left your box off for a
few days. Your clock might get inaccurate by
quite a few seconds (about 2-5 minutes a month
on some hardware).

So ntp either converges for the whole eternity, or
just fails to work. Ntpdate at startup solves this
problem.