ntpd: Synchronizing with time server: [FAILED]
Starting ntpd: [ OK ]
When does it do the sync?
# Synchronize with servers if step-tickers exists
# or the -x option is used
echo -n $”$prog: Synchronizing with time server: ”
/usr/sbin/ntpdate $dropstr -s -b -p 8 $tickers 2>/dev/null >/dev/null
RETVAL=$?
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && success || failure It does the sync when the /etc/ntp/step-tickers file is there. [root@localhost ~]#
cat /etc/ntp/step-tickers
time.vmware.com
Why would this happen? Strange stuff…
[root@localhost ~]# /etc/init.d/ntpd stop
Shutting down ntpd: [ OK ]
[root@localhost ~]# ntpdate time.vmware.com
28 Jun 10:49:44 ntpdate[25663]: step time server 10.16.12.148 offset 90.895171 sec
The ntpdate command doesn’t fail … wonder why… tail /var/log/messages shows:
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpd: ntpd shutdown failed
un 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpdate[26038]: can’t find host time.vmware.com
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpdate[26038]: no servers can be used, exiting
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpd: failed
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpd[26043]: ntpd [email protected] Wed Nov 17 15:43:55 EST 2004 (1)
Jun 28 10:52:32 localhost ntpd: ntpd startup succeeded
Can’t find host? Why’s that? Let’s try using the IP address instead of the name in the step-tickers file. Well, the IP address fixes it in Redhat Enterprise Linux 4, but I had this problem with ESX server (based on Redhat 7.2).
The problem was
[root@localhost ~]# file /etc/ntp/step-tickers
/etc/ntp/step-tickers: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators The file was a DOS file. When the problem was in ESX, I was able to see the ^M character in /var/log/messages, so I was able to fix it after finding that. Fun stuff huh?