Configuring the System Clock

Linux clock should normally be configured as UTC (GMT). Accurate time is obtained over the network, ultimately from atomic clocks, in some cases via radio broadcast or GPS receiver.

Byron Jennings maintains alph01, alph02 and lin02 as stratum 2 time servers. These broadcast on the multicast address NTP.MCAST.NET (224.0.1.1).

Normal Linux Installation

Install xntpd from the RedHat distribution CD. The multicast option in the standard config seems to work OK providing that multicast is enabled in the kernel (later distributions).
/etc/ntp/step-tickers should include

time1 time2 time3

(these are aliases for alph01, alph02, lin02)
When xntpd is running properly, ntptrace yields output similar to this:

$ /usr/sbin/ntptrace
localhost: stratum 3, offset 0.000051, synch distance 0.07538
lin02.Triumf.CA: stratum 2, offset 0.002962, synch distance 0.05753
tic.nrc.ca: stratum 1, offset 0.005205, synch distance 0.00792, refid 'ATOM'

Andrew Daviel <advax@triumf.ca>