loki@physics.mcgill.ca (Loki Jorgenson Rm421) (10/11/90)
Can anyone comment on whether IRIX 3.3 supports date/time
via ntp either with the existing timed or with some appropriately
hacked version of ntpd? I understand that the new IRIX 3.3 has
improved timing but I would still like to tie the PIs in with
our SUNs which use NTP.
Regards,
__ __
/ / \ \
Loki Jorgenson / /\/\/\/\/\/\ \ node: loki@physics.mcgill.ca
Physics, McGill University < < > > fax: (514) 398-3733
Montreal Quebec CANADA \ \/\/\/\/\/\/ / phone: (514) 398-6531
\_\ /_/
__ __
<_< Lurking with the intent to skulk >_>whaley@elbo.ucs.ubc.ca (Paul Whaley) (10/12/90)
In article <9010102100.AA02185@frodo.Physics.McGill.CA>, loki@physics.mcgill.ca (Loki Jorgenson Rm421) writes: |> |> Can anyone comment on whether IRIX 3.3 supports date/time |> via ntp either with the existing timed or with some appropriately |> hacked version of ntpd? I understand that the new IRIX 3.3 has |> improved timing but I would still like to tie the PIs in with |> our SUNs which use NTP. |> ntp 3.4.1 seems to run just fine on our 4D25S PIs. It needs a DEFINES of -D_BSD_SIGNALS to get the BSD signal behaviour. We are running 3.3 now, will be going to 3.3.1 soon. -- Paul Whaley Internet: whaley@ucs.ubc.ca Academic Operating Systems UUCP: ...!ubc-cs!mtsg.ubc.ca!Paul_Whaley University Computing Services BITNET: USERWHAL@UBCMTSG U. of British Columbia Phone: (604) 228-3976
vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) (10/13/90)
In article <9010102100.AA02185@frodo.Physics.McGill.CA>, loki@physics.mcgill.ca (Loki Jorgenson Rm421) writes: > > Can anyone comment on whether IRIX 3.3 supports date/time > via ntp either with the existing timed or with some appropriately > hacked version of ntpd? I understand that the new IRIX 3.3 has > improved timing but I would still like to tie the PIs in with > our SUNs which use NTP. I think NTP is a good protocol. Someday, it may be in the standard release. Until then, if I were in your situation, I would use timeslave to connect one of my IRIS's to a NTP ticker at a fairly good stratum, and the use timed and a netgroup synchronize the rest. You could use more than one IRIS-NTP pair for redundancy. Timeslave was developed before NTP was public knowledge, when the SGI network was connected by a heavily congested, somewhat unreliable 9600 b/s TCP/IP link to a machine at another company with a "satelite receiver." It uses the UDP time port for the date and ICMP timestamps for milliseconds. It has some (probably naive) filtering to fight things like occassionally assymmetric round trip delays. It can be an entertaining, independent measure of the accuracy of other time mechanisms. After NTP is available (errrr, "if"--no promises, no dates, etc. It's been on the list for years), I would still use timed to slave the majority of a network of IRIS's to scattered NTP players. Last I looked, NTP is still weak on automatically discovering and using a good time server. Timed, despite grievious bugs in the protocol (not to mention astonishing bugs in the 4.3BSD implementation, which I think are fixed in IRIX), works pretty well "out of the box." That is the excuse used for shipping timed turned on by default. To avoid the wrath of the Net Gods, please do not use timeslave accross the Internet. It can be tuned use lots of packets. Vernon Schryver, vjs@sgi.com
srp@babar.mmwb.ucsf.edu (Scott R. Presnell) (10/13/90)
vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) writes: >In article <9010102100.AA02185@frodo.Physics.McGill.CA>, loki@physics.mcgill.ca (Loki Jorgenson Rm421) writes: >> >> Can anyone comment on whether IRIX 3.3 supports date/time >> via ntp either with the existing timed or with some appropriately >> hacked version of ntpd? I understand that the new IRIX 3.3 has >> improved timing but I would still like to tie the PIs in with >> our SUNs which use NTP. >I think NTP is a good protocol. Someday, it may be in the standard release. >Until then, if I were in your situation, I would use timeslave to connect >one of my IRIS's to a NTP ticker at a fairly good stratum, and the use >timed and a netgroup synchronize the rest. You could use more than one >IRIS-NTP pair for redundancy. This seems like good advice. We have ntpd running here on 4D's under 3.3.1 without problems (so far). Nptd is not configured to correctly read the IRIX kernel, so you can't adjust the timetrim varaible on the fly, but that's not necessary for the operation of the daemon. We were running timeslave previously. I got the source locally. I think a copy resides on louie.udel.edu in ~ftp/pub/ntp. Alternatively you might post to comp.protocols.time.ntp... Good luck. - Scott -- Scott Presnell +1 (415) 476-9890 Pharm. Chem., S-926 Internet: srp@cgl.ucsf.edu University of California UUCP: ...ucbvax!ucsfcgl!srp San Francisco, CA. 94143-0446 Bitnet: srp@ucsfcgl.bitnet
robert@shangri-la.gatech.edu (Robert Viduya) (10/14/90)
We ported the ntp package to all our machines including the SGI's. We run the daemon, xntpd, on the file & compute servers and have a program the runs ntpdate on the workstations every so often (ntpdate is a one-shot program that syncs the local time with a given ntp server). We decided against using cron to run ntpdate on the workstations 'cuz we've seen cron get royally confused on a PI with a failing battery. The program we wrote to run ntpdate is based on time-intervals, not absolute-times like cron. We originally used timed/timeslave as provided by SGI, but ran into problems when our network bogged down. Ntp seems to handle things a lot better. robert -- Robert Viduya robert@shangri-la.gatech.edu Technical Services / Office of Information Technology Georgia Institute of Technology (404) 894-6296 Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0275