ntpclient is an NTP (RFC-1305) client for unix-alike computers.
Its functionality is a small subset of xntpd, but IMHO performs
better (or at least has the potential to function better) within
that limited scope. Since it is much smaller than xntpd, it is
also more relevant for embedded computers.
ntpclient is Copyright 1997, 1999, 2000 Larry Doolittle, and may
be freely used and copied according to the terms of the GNU
General Public License, version 2.
ntpclient home page: http://doolittle.faludi.com/ntpclient/
To build on Linux, type "make". Solaris and other Unix users will
probably need to adjust the Makefile slightly. It's not complicated.
Usage: ntpclient [options]
options:
-c count stop after count time measurements (default 0 means go forever)
-d print diagnostics (feature can be disabled at compile time)
-h hostname (mandatory) NTP server host, against which to measure system time
-i interval check time every interval seconds (default 600)
-l attempt to lock local clock to server using adjtimex(2)
-p port local NTP client UDP port (default 0 means "any available")
-r replay analysis code based on stdin
-s simple clock set (implies -c 1)
Mortal users can use this program for monitoring, but not clock setting
(with the -s or -l switches). The -l switch has not been well tested.
Simulation (with -r) actually looks halfway decent, so locking should be
OK too, but it needs some tuning.
The test.dat file has 200 lines of sample output. Its first few lines,
with the output column headers that are shown when the -d option is
chosen, are:
day second elapsed stall skew dispersion freq
51785 180.386 1398.0 40.3 953773.9 793.5 -1240000
51785 780.382 1358.0 41.3 954329.0 915.5 -1240000
51785 1380.381 1439.0 56.0 954871.3 915.5 -1240000
day, second: time of measurement
elapsed: total time from query to response (microseconds)
stall: time the server reports that it sat on the request (microseconds)
skew: difference between local time and server time (microseconds)
dispersion: reported by server, see RFC-1305 (microseconds)
freq: local clock frequency adjustment (Linux only, ppm*65536)
test.dat is suitable for piping into ntpclient -r. I have over 53000
samples (lines) archived for study, that I don't include here.
They are spaced 10 minutes apart, representing over a year of data
logging (not continuous, unfortunately).
envelope is a perl script that I have used for my lock studies.
It's kind of a hack and not worth documenting here.
- Larry Doolittle <larry@doolittle.boa.org>
