Making Time with NTP
Articles and Tips: qna
01 Mar 1999
Q.
Dear Ab-end: I have a question about using Network Time Protocol (NTP) to get time from an Internet time source. I spoke with several tech support people at Novell and they say the only way to get time from an external time source over pure IP is to use NTP.NLM. I was under the impression that TIMESYNC.NLM could do this. Who's right?
—Anxious in Atlanta
A.
Dear Anxious: You both are! Currently, the only way to get time over pure IP is by using NTP.NLM. But the new TIMESYNC utility (to be released in open beta soon) is being designed so it will understand NTP. NTP time sources can be configured for the time sources, and TIMESYNC will then contact the NTP time source for time. Conversely, NTP servers can be configured to take time from a NetWare server.
With this enhancement, you can enter the IP address of an Internet time source as the time source for TIMESYNC. You need to do this only on the Single Reference or Reference time servers on your network.
There is one slight glitch to be aware of in the upcoming release of TIMESYNC: it cannot yet understand DNS names. This feature is slated for a future release.
Until the new TIMESYNC is available, you will have to resort to the following work-around: Ping the Internet time source, obtain the dotted decimal IP address, and then place it in the TIMESYNC list of time sources. When customers load NTP, it will write the server console screen every time it goes out to these sources to the time. This will create quite a lot of information to scroll across the console. If you want to monitor this, either redirect the screen output to a file or to another screen rather than the console.
Before you get too anxious for NTP, understand that NTP in NetWare is not yet production-ready. Novell strongly recommends that customers wait until it has been thoroughly tested before implementing it.
FTP and NetWare 5
* Originally published in Novell AppNotes
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The origin of this information may be internal or external to Novell. While Novell makes all reasonable efforts to verify this information, Novell does not make explicit or implied claims to its validity.