Linux – ntpdate, ntpd can update time from time.google.com but the ntpd service fails

linuxntpntpdatetimeUbuntu

I'm trying to synchronise my Ubuntu 12.04.5 instance with the Google timeservers at time{1,4}.google.com and I can successfully query using both ntpdate and ntpd but once I start ntp as a service it fails to contact the time servers. Not sure why I'd be able to do one but not the other?

Querying with ntpdate works:

$ ntpdate time1.google.com
14 Feb 10:47:28 ntpdate[17245]: adjust time server 216.239.35.0 offset 0.015588 sec

As does querying with ntpd:

$ ntpd -q -g -c /etc/ntp.conf
ntpd: time slew -0.004094s

But all I see in ntpq once I've started the ntpd service is INIT:

$ service ntp start
$ ntpq -n
ntpq> peers
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
 <local IP>      .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 216.239.35.0    .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 216.239.35.4    .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 216.239.35.8    .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 216.239.35.12   .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000

And it doesn't change from this state. My ntp.conf file just consists entirely of the Google servers and nothing else (no restrict lines):

$ cat /etc/ntp.conf
server time1.google.com
server time2.google.com
server time3.google.com
server time4.google.com

Best Answer

Come back in 15 minutes and check again.

the client normally takes a few minutes to synchronize to a server.

When started for the first time and a frequency file is not present, the daemon enters a special mode in order to calibrate the frequency. This takes 900 s during which the time is not disciplined.

http://doc.ntp.org/current-stable/debug.html

The debug page also shows a few more variables to look at, notably the associations command.

Related Topic