check_ntp

[Paul L. Allen]

Leif Nixon writes: 

> I have stared at that line of code several times without understanding
> it. Why would an offset of 0 be bogus?

Because the guy who wrote the plugin thinks that it can only arise in
circumstances when ntpd is not configured in a useful way.  He's probably
right. 

> The estimated offset varies continuously, and sometimes just happens to 
> hit 0.000 ms.

I don't believe that of the server you showed us the results for.  It
was at stratum zero, which means it has NO references.  That means it's
running from the local clock with NO attempt to correct for drift.  Which
means that as a source of time it is useless, unless you have replaced
the cheap quartz crystal oscillator on your motherboard with an atomic
clock.  If you have things configured to use the local clock with a drift
file and the external references go away then you end up (if you follow
convention) at stratum 10, not stratum 0. 

> Basically, we trust ntpd to do its job. If it says it is synced we
> believe it keeps the local system time from drifting.

And if you have no references then it is not synched to anything, drifts
all over the place, and is at stratum zero with an offset of precisely
zero.  I can think of valid reasons why that might be exactly what you
want to happen (twice a year) as a kluge for a badly-designed application
package running on a network of Windows machines.  Other than that it is
a configuration error which the plugin reports as being critical. 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support 




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