Re: ntpd/ntpdate not setting time after upgrade to 14.2

On Sun, Apr 06, 2025 at 07:23:19AM -0700, paul beard wrote:
> I reboot my freebsd system every sunday at 3AM (it runs in a VM on a
> machine that needs a reboot every so often so I just do that and the
> router/AP all at once). This was all good under 13.4 but now that I am on
> 14.2, I find the machine comes up in UTC and stays there until I set the
> time by hand. I have ntpd and ntpdate both set to "on" in rc.conf, not sure
> why or which makes more sense. ntpd is running but only sets the time if I
> run it by hand. I only find this out when a cron job reports it can't
> overwrite a file (backup from the day before).
> 
> Apr  5 20:02:19 <ntp.notice> www ntpd[767]: leapsecond file ('/var/db/ntpd.leap-seconds.list'): loaded, expire=2025-06-28T00:00:00Z last=2017-01-01T00:00:00Z ofs=37
> Apr  5 20:02:29 <ntp.err> www ntpd[767]: Clock offset exceeds panic threshold.
> Apr  5 20:02:29 <ntp.err> www ntpd[767]: Set system clock by hand.
> Apr  6 07:14:05 <ntp.notice> www ntpd[3425]: ntpd 4.2.8p18-a (1): Starting
> Apr  6 07:14:05 <ntp.notice> www ntpd[3425]: Command line: /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/db/ntp/ntpd.pid -c /etc/ntp.conf -f /var/db/ntp/ntpd.drift

Typically you don't need ntpdate along with ntpd, since the ntpdate(8)
functionality is part of ntpd these days. E.g. I run like this:

$ grep ntp /etc/rc.conf
ntpd_enable="YES"
ntpd_sync_on_start="YES"

The sync_on_start option adds flag "-g" to ntpd which allows the initial
startup time adjustment to be large. The ntpd(8) man page mentions the
panic threshold you're seeing in the log, and the -g flag is intended to
address that.

Cheers,
sr.