4 ms·

They don't do the same thing. At least last time I looked at it, openntpd was more like a SNTP client than a NTP client. That means it's more suitable for foll

They don't do the same thing. At least last time I looked at it, openntpd was more like a SNTP client than a NTP client. That means it's more suitable for following a reference clock, not keeping a number of machines in sync with each other and the rest of the world. Unless they have implemented more of the protocol now. This has security implications of its own.

marios 9y ago
I'm running OpenNTPD on all my devices (laptops, servers, VMs) and as far as I can tell they are in sync. Both amongsts themselves, as well as with other devices that are running other NTP implementations. I've heard other people claiming that OpenNTPD is not accurate enough and what not, but my anecdata says it performs well enough. Do you happen to have any specific gripes with it ? Is it the timekeeping algorithm that is lacking ? Sibling comment mentioned leap seconds, and that's unlikely to change. AFAIK, for 'proper' leap second support, the daemon must support it (to parse the announcement from the upstream NTP) as well as the OS. Gathering from I've read on OpenBSD's mailing lists, leap second support in the kernel is not a priority -- to say the least. Seeing the fallout on other OSes, I'd say it's a sound decision. On a similar note, Google introduced leap smearing to not deal with introducing leap seconds across all of its' servers[1]. Several other actors, such as Amazon[2] and Akamai followed suite. [1] https://googleblog.blogspot.fr/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html https://googleblog.blogspot.fr/2011/09/time-technology-and-l... [2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/look-before-you-leap-the-coming-leap-second-and-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/look-before-you-leap-the-co... [3] https://blogs.akamai.com/2016/11/planning-for-the-end-of-2016-a-leap-second-and-the-end-of-support-for-sha-1-tls-certificates.html https://blogs.akamai.com/2016/11/planning-for-the-end-of-201...
- burntrelish1273 9y ago
  IIRC (possibly outdated info) OpenNTPd lacked support for Linux and other platform PLL syscalls, just used the standard (and less precise) adjtime syscall.
burntrelish1273 9y ago
Exactly. openntpd isn't very precise and doesn't have many necessary features for running in production as a local NTP stratum source.

marios 9y ago

I'm running OpenNTPD on all my devices (laptops, servers, VMs) and as far as I can tell they are in sync. Both amongsts themselves, as well as with other devices that are running other NTP implementations. I've heard other people claiming that OpenNTPD is not accurate enough and what not, but my anecdata says it performs well enough. Do you happen to have any specific gripes with it ? Is it the timekeeping algorithm that is lacking ? Sibling comment mentioned leap seconds, and that's unlikely to change. AFAIK, for 'proper' leap second support, the daemon must support it (to parse the announcement from the upstream NTP) as well as the OS. Gathering from I've read on OpenBSD's mailing lists, leap second support in the kernel is not a priority -- to say the least. Seeing the fallout on other OSes, I'd say it's a sound decision. On a similar note, Google introduced leap smearing to not deal with introducing leap seconds across all of its' servers[1]. Several other actors, such as Amazon[2] and Akamai followed suite. [1] https://googleblog.blogspot.fr/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html https://googleblog.blogspot.fr/2011/09/time-technology-and-l... [2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/look-before-you-leap-the-coming-leap-second-and-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/look-before-you-leap-the-co... [3] https://blogs.akamai.com/2016/11/planning-for-the-end-of-2016-a-leap-second-and-the-end-of-support-for-sha-1-tls-certificates.html https://blogs.akamai.com/2016/11/planning-for-the-end-of-201...

burntrelish1273 9y ago
IIRC (possibly outdated info) OpenNTPd lacked support for Linux and other platform PLL syscalls, just used the standard (and less precise) adjtime syscall.

burntrelish1273 9y ago

Exactly. openntpd isn't very precise and doesn't have many necessary features for running in production as a local NTP stratum source.