[leaf-user] Openntp

[bob <bo...@vk...>]

I'm going to reply to my own question on openntp daemon, in case this
helps anyone.
I cannot get the LEAF box to act as an ntp server for my LAN.
Firstly, I had an old version which reported:

"openntpd[11960]: fatal: bind: Address already in use"

I replaced it with the latst version: 3.9p1 Rev 3 uClibc 0.9.28 and the
error message is gone.
It still doesn't act as a server however.
After much searching of the web, I eventually found
that openntpd will not serve time unless it has properly synchronised
itself with it's server(s). This is indicated by an entry in daemon.log.
I never get this entry (even though the LEAF box runs for many months
without interruption), therefore openntpd is not achieving full synch.
and is not serving time to the LAN.

from http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq6.html#OpenNTPD
**************************************************
6.12.3 - Why can't my other machines synchronize to OpenNTPD?
ntpd(8) does not listen on any address by default. So in order to use it
as a server, you have to uncomment the "#listen on *" line in
/etc/ntpd.conf and restart the ntpd(8) daemon. Of course, if you wish it
to listen on a particular IP address rather than all available addresses
and interfaces, replace the "*" with the desired address.

When you have ntpd(8) listening, it may happen that other machines still
can't synchronize to it! A freshly started ntpd(8) daemon (for example,
if you just restarted it after modifying ntpd.conf) refuses to serve
time information to other clients until it adjusts its own clock to a
reasonable level of stability first. When ntpd(8) considers its own time
information stable, it announces it by a "clock now synced" message in
/var/log/daemon. Even if the system clock is pretty accurate in the
beginning, it can take up to 10 minutes to get in sync, and hours or
days if the clock is not accurately set at the start.
**************************************************

Not a solution - but an explanation. Anyone know how I can myke it sync?



A seperate clock issue is that of openvpn.
When the LEAF box boots, it gets it's time & date from openntpd, this
allows the Certificates in openvpn to function.
In Germany, with a t-online connection, the login procedure has certain
qualities.
If the leaf box experiences a power cut for a short time (under 1
minute), the pppoe login is rejected by the provider, presumably because
it looks like a second login to the previous one, but the second attempt
is OK. However openntpd has been started with no ppp connection and the
fails forever. This effectively produces a denial of service on openvpn
and no one can connect.

I have made a small cron job that 'fixes' (nast hack) this:

#!/bin/sh

if date +%Y ilt 2010
   then /etc/init.d/openntpd restart 2>&1 /dev/null
fi

Which I then call in /etc/crontab at 5 minute intervals:

*/5 *   * * *   root    /usr/bin/fixdate

This has fixed a big problem for remote access (for me).

Regards,

Robert von Knobloch