From: williams@NSSDCS.GSFC.NASA.GOV (James W. Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.time.ntp
Subject: need a bit of help with ntp.conf
Date: 26 Aug 92 19:40:39 GMT
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet

I am having trouble with these paragraphs from the ntpd man page...

     Currently three time server  specifications  are  supported.
     They are peer, server and passive. Each command takes either
     a dotted-quad internet address or a host  name.   Each  host
     specified  in  any one of the three commands is elligable to
     be synchronized to, while random hosts which set up  a  peer
     relationship  are  not.  The peer and server commands create
     an active polling situation; in the case of  peer,  the  NTP
     packets  are  sourced  in Symmetric-Active mode, while using
     server causes the  packets  to  be  in  Client  mode.   When
     reachability  is  lost  with  a configured host in either of
     these two cases, the daemon will continue  to  poll  to  re-
     acquire  that host.  A host specified in the passive command
     will not continue to be polled.  If that host begins to poll
     us,  it  will be eligable as to be synchronized but will not
     be polled if reachability is lost.

     It is recommended that the  bulk  of  the  peers  configured
     should  be  specified  with  the  client  keyword; this will
     minimize resource usage on the remote NTP server.   If  your
     host will be serving as a redistribution point for a cluster
     of hosts,  you should set up peer relationships with  higher
     quality  clocks  (lower  stratums)  and  other equal stratum
     clocks.  In other words, if you are not redistributing  time
     to others, you shouldn't need to configure any peers in your
     NTP configuration; client specifications are more  appropri-
     ate.

The second paragraph refers to the "client" keyword, but the
the first paragraph says that the three choices are "peer", "server",
and "passive".  I am trying to set up one of my Suns (nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov)
as a local ntp server that is synchronized to umd1 and serves as the
"master clock" for my other suns.  It is far from clear from the above
just how my /etc/ntp.conf files should look.  The file on nssdcs
is given below.  It seems to be synched with umd1.  Any help would be 
most appreciated!  Also, I'm not sure what "precision" should be for
a Sun 4.

Thanks,
Jim

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# $Source: /usr/users/louie/ntp/RCS/ntp.conf,v $ $Revision: 3.4.1.1 $ $Date: 89/03/22 18:33:02 $
#
# 		Local clock parameters
#
#
#	Precision of the local clock to the nearest power of 2
#		ex.
#			60-HZ   = 2**-6
#			100-HZ  = 2**-7
#			1000-HZ = 2**-10
precision -7
#
#	Peers - please refer to the README file for proper selection of
#		NTP peers
#
peer		nails.gsfc.nasa.gov
peer		ncgl.gsfc.nasa.gov
server		umd1.umd.edu

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spoken: James W. Williams			Company: Hughes STX
Internet: williams@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov		Phone: +1 301 286-1131
USPS: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Code 633; Greenbelt, MD 20771
Maryland Car Tags: DEV CAR
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.time.ntp,comp.unix.aix