FreeBSD date drifts significantly

[Eric]

Neil Short wrote:
> my FreeBSD date drifts out of sync with the system
> date.
>
> When I set it, it is absolutely correct and matches
> the system (CMOS) date. I then reboot and - shezam!
> it's jumped 12 hours forward. Reboot again - another
> 12 hour jump ... until the FreeBSD date is about 2 and
> a half days beyond today's date - and the CMOS date.
>
> When I set up the system I said that the system clock
> is NOT set to UTC - but just to be sure, I went back
> into sysinstall and re-set the time zone the same way
> (MST - Arizona).
>
> I suspect this has something to do with maybe the
> server that is synchronizing my time; but I don't
> recall how to synchronize my time with an up-stream
> server. Can't find documentation on it either.
>
> Any pointers?
>   

man ntpd

has your answers. my /etc/ntp.conf looks like:

server us.pool.ntp.org
server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
driftfile /var/db/ntp.drift

things stay synced up tight on my machine