Lately I came to notice that my computer’s time began to drift irrationally, although I have ntpd running. I have the default ntpd.conf, and in particular with this servers list:
server 0.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst server 1.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst server 2.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst server 3.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
So why in the world would my time drift? This configuration has been working fine for years. I began to check the synchronization using ntpdc:
ntpdc -c peers
And there, I saw only one line, telling me that I peered with 172.17.0.2. For instance, my network is 192.168.42.0/24 and runs no ntp server, so there is a bit of a problem here. In fact, I went to someplace where the DHCP announces a ntp server, and the configuration was kept ever since.
Thus, a very simple solution exists:
sudo rm -f /var/lib/ntp/ntp.conf.dhcp service ntpd restart
And now everything is well:
17:57 remy@magi ~ % ntpdc -c peers
remote local st poll reach delay offset disp
=======================================================================
*2a01:e0b:1:88:2 2a01:d35:213d:8 2 64 377 0.02591 -0.028799 0.03157
=thor.netservice 192.168.42.129 2 64 377 0.14030 -0.028539 0.03108
=utility-lax.rac 192.168.42.129 3 64 377 0.19328 -0.016656 0.03149
=isaachayes.khre 192.168.42.129 2 64 377 0.18999 -0.020809 0.03113
We’ll note that it furiously looks like Debian’s #569775 bug.
