ntpd configuration . . . and errors

[Bob Johnson]

On 7/14/06, Owen G <owen_pg at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Following the suggestions regarding setting timekeeping up as a daemon
> I did the following and got these console messages . . .
>
> . . .
> Jul 14 13:04:29 epia ntpd[648]: no IPv6 interfaces found
> Jul 14 13:04:29 epia ntpd[648]: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for
> "europe.pool.ntp.org IN AAAA", got type "A"

This isn't a problem. It asked for an IP6 address if available and it
wasn't, so it got an IP4 address instead.

> Jul 14 13:04:29 epia ntpd[648]: Frequency format error in
> /var/db/ntpd.drift
> Jul 14 13:05:44 epia ntpd[656]: no IPv6 interfaces found

Notice the process ID changed from 648 to 656 here. It looks like a
second copy of ntpd is trying to start.

> Jul 14 13:05:44 epia ntpd[656]: bind() fd 4, family 2, port 123, addr
> 0.0.0.0, i
> n_classd=0 flags=8 fails: Address already in use

The second copy can't grab port 123 because the first copy is already using it.

The output of ntpq -p should be informative. It will tell you if ntpd
is actually working.

By the way, you can use multiple servers for greater reliability, e.g.
in ntp.conf:

server     0.europe.pool.ntp.org
server     1.europe.pool.ntp.org
server     2.europe.pool.ntp.org

will give you three different randomly selected servers, in case one goes down.

- Bob