[Tfug] ntpd problems - server losing an hour or more each day

[Chad Woolley]

Hi,

I have a box (Ubuntu Server) which keeps losing time, an hour or more
per day.  I'm running ntpd, but it keeps (apparently) crashing when
the time gets too far off, even though I pass the -g option.

The strange thing is, this is a VMWare virtual server, and another
virtual server on the same box  which is - er - virtually identical -
does NOT have this problem.

This was a standard apt install of the ntp daemon (just like the other
box).  We've tweaked the config a bit, to no avail - logging to a
separate file, passing -g on startup, and commenting out the "LOCAL"
entries in ntp.conf.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix or even debug this?  Here's the
log for ntpd, I can provide the init script/ntpd conf if needed.

12 Oct 11:39:16 ntpd[18862]: ntpd 4.2.0a at 1:4.2.0a+stable-8-r Mon May
29 02:48:41 UTC 2006 (1)
12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: precision = 5.000 usec
12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface wildcard, 0.0.0.0#123
12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface wildcard, ::#123
12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface lo, 127.0.0.1#123
12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface eth0, 69.55.xxx.xxx#123
12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: kernel time sync status 0040
12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: frequency initialized 50.605 PPM from
/var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
12 Oct 11:51:04 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 82.211.81.145, stratum 2
12 Oct 11:54:14 ntpd[18862]: time reset +190.260196 s
12 Oct 11:54:14 ntpd[18862]: kernel time sync disabled 0041
12 Oct 11:59:37 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 213.251.165.16, stratum 2
12 Oct 12:04:57 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 82.211.81.145, stratum 2
12 Oct 12:04:57 ntpd[18862]: kernel time sync enabled 0001
12 Oct 12:07:13 ntpd[18862]: no servers reachable
12 Oct 12:49:06 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 213.251.165.16, stratum 2
12 Oct 12:49:06 ntpd[18862]: time correction of 1022 seconds exceeds
sanity limit (1000); set clock manually to the correct UTC time.


Thanks,
Chad