Last update: March 23, 2023 21:05 UTC (6ad51a76f)
from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
I told you it was eyeball and wristwatch.
Disclaimer: This program has known bugs and deficiencies and nobody has volunteered to fix them in a long time. The good news is the functionality originally intended for this program is available in the
ntpd
andsntp
programs. See the Deprecatingntpdate
topic for a thorough discussion and analysis of the issues. See the-q
command line option inntpd
- Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon orsntp
- Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) Client. After a suitable period of mourning, thentpdate
program will be retired from this distribution.
ntpdate [ -46bBdqsuv ] [ -a key ] [ -e authdelay ] [ -k keyfile ] [ -o version ] [ -p samples ] [ -t timeout ] server [ … ]
ntpdate
sets the local date and time by polling the Network Time Protocol (NTP) server(s) given as the server
arguments to determine the correct time. It must be run as root on the local host. A number of samples are obtained from each of the servers specified and a subset of the NTP clock filter and selection algorithms are applied to select the best of these. Note that the accuracy and reliability of ntpdate
depends on the number of servers, the number of polls each time it is run and the interval between runs.
ntpdate
can be run manually as necessary to set the host clock, or it can be run from the host startup script to set the clock at boot time. This is useful in some cases to set the clock initially before starting the NTP daemon ntpd
. It is also possible to run ntpdate
from a cron
script. However, it is important to note that ntpdate
with contrived cron
scripts is no substitute for the NTP daemon, which uses sophisticated algorithms to maximize accuracy and reliability while minimizing resource use. Finally, since ntpdate
does not discipline the host clock frequency as does ntpd
, the accuracy using ntpdate
is limited.
Time adjustments are made by ntpdate
in one of two ways. If ntpdate
determines the clock is in error more than 0.5 second it will simply step the time by calling the system settimeofday()
routine. If the error is less than 0.5 seconds, it will slew the time by calling the system adjtime()
routine. The latter technique is less disruptive and more accurate when the error is small, and works quite well when ntpdate
is run by cron
every hour or two.
ntpdate
will, if the -u
flag was not specified, decline to set the date if an NTP server daemon (e.g., ntpd
) is running on the same host. When running ntpdate
on a regular basis from cron
as an alternative to running a daemon, doing so once every hour or two will result in precise enough timekeeping to avoid stepping the clock.
Note that in contexts where a host name is expected, a -4
qualifier preceding the host name forces DNS resolution to the IPv4 namespace, while a -6
qualifier forces DNS resolution to the IPv6 namespace.
If NetInfo support is compiled into ntpdate
, then the server
argument is optional if ntpdate
can find a time server in the NetInfo configuration for ntpd
.
-4
-6
-a key
key
. The keys and key identifiers must match in both the client and server key files. The default is to disable the authentication function.-B
adjtime()
system call, even if the measured offset is greater than +-500 ms. The default is to step the time using settimeofday()
if the offset is greater than +-500 ms. Note that, if the offset is much greater than +-500 ms in this case, that it can take a long time (hours) to slew the clock to the correct value. During this time. the host should not be used to synchronize clients.-b
settimeofday()
system call, rather than slewed (default) using the adjtime()
system call. This option should be used when called from a startup file at boot time.-d
ntpdate
will go through all the steps, but not adjust the local clock and using an unprivileged port. Information useful for general debugging will also be printed.-e authdelay
authdelay
, in seconds and fraction (see ntpd
for details). This number is usually small enough to be negligible for most purposes, though specifying a value may improve timekeeping on very slow CPUs.-k keyfile
keyfile
. The default is /etc/ntp.keys
. This file should be in the format described in ntpd
.-o version
version
, which can be 1, 2, 3
or 4
. The default is 4
. This allows ntpdate
to be used with older NTP versions.-p samples
samples
, with values from 1
to 8
inclusive. The default is 4
.-q
-s
syslog
facility. This is designed primarily for convenience of cron
scripts.-t timeout
timeout
, in seconds and fraction. The value is rounded to a multiple of 0.2 seconds. The default is 2
seconds, a value suitable for polling across a LAN.-u
ntpdate
to use an unprivileged port for outgoing packets. This is most useful when behind a firewall that blocks incoming traffic to privileged ports, and you want to synchronize with hosts beyond the firewall. Note that the -d
option always uses unprivileged ports.-v
ntpdate
’s version identification string to be logged.ntpdate
’s exit status is zero if it finds a server and updates the clock, and nonzero otherwise.
/etc/ntp.keys
- encryption keys used by ntpdate
.
The slew adjustment is actually 50% larger than the measured offset, since this (it is argued) will tend to keep a badly drifting clock more accurate. This is probably not a good idea and may cause a troubling hunt for some values of the kernel variables tick
and tickadj
.