Configuring Timesync with 5.24 versions and higher.
(Last modified: 18Feb2003)
This document (10070057) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.
goal
Recommendations for configuring Timesync 5.24o versions and higher.
fact
Novell Timesync
Novell NetWare 5
Novell NetWare 6.0
Novell eDirectory 8.6
symptom
Time is not in sync between servers.
change
Added new timesync or added a Support Pack 3 (or greater) on NetWare 5.1 or Support Pack 1 (or greater) for NetWare 6
cause
IMPORTANT: Please follow the directions as closely as possible in this document as significant changes have been made to stabilize the time environment. If you have a firewall in your environment, it may be necessary to make an allowance for communications between the reference time server and the internet time source.
Load MONITOR.NLM | Server Parameters | Time to make changes to timesync.
Note that this does not preclude a large scale rollout of timesync.cfg files. Making changes directly to the timesync.cfg file is only recommended for this purpose. Otherwise, use Monitor wherever possible.
fix
Installation Instructions
Requirements
NetWare 5.0 SP6a + OS5PT2A.EXE + wsock4.exe or higher
NetWare 5.1 SP3
NetWare 6.0 SP1
************* Important Information ************************
A.) Go from the Top down with this installation. Start with the Reference/Single and Primaries first. Then start your secondaries. Do not assume that because they are secondaries, they don't need to be updated. If they have replicas and have an older version, you experience old problems. Don't maintain a mix and match of timesync.
B.) Use NTP or IP where you can. NTP specifically causes less traffic and the packets are small. To make your server use NTP, just add :123 to the end of the IP address in the Time Source list. It is recommended to have your Reference or Single Reference point to an Atomic clock providing Stratum 1 or Stratum 2 services for accuracy. There are many public, NTP clocks you can point your server to. Do a search on the internet for NTP and there are pages that show all of the available public atomic clock services.
C.) Remove any loopback address settings from the Time Source list. It is also NOT required to have a primary in the Reference server's Time Source list unless you want to use NTP peering and voting between Reference and Primaries. We recommend that you not put a Primary IP address in the time source list on the reference.
D.) Use Monitor | Server Parameters | Time to configure timesync. If you notice problems with correct information staying in the fields, recopy the timesync.msg file over to the sys:system\nls\4 directory. Most likely it didn't take. Unload and reload timesync to insure the msg file gets loaded. Make sure there is NO TIMESYNC.MSG FILE IN THE SYS:SYSTEM directory. If there is, delete it.
E.) Older versions of timesync (5.20 or earlier) may hang when unloading. Typically the prompt will return withing 30-60 minutes. If this is a problem, you may want to just restart the server after following these instructions. Secondary's and Primary's typically unload without the hang but be cautious if you need your console prompt immediately.
F.) NTP now uses a Dynamic client source port 1024 or higher outbound, and the destination server NTP port 123 as the destination when requesting NTP. If the Reference or Single Reference is pulling time from an internet source, this may require that firewall administrators make an allowance for this either in an ACL, filter, etc. This is different from previous versions of timesync.
G.) This version requires that you configure a source list on the Reference or Single reference server. Without a configured time source list, it will not poll from any server. This should be fixed in versions later than 5.24o and 6.01e.
H.) If you use 5.24o or 6.01e or earlier on a Multi-Processor server or a server with a Public and Private interface for routing, you may have to add the following lines to the end of the AUTOEXEC.NCF:
Unload TIMESYNC.NLM
Load TIMESYNC.NLM
note
******* Timesync debug logging features ***************
Timesync will now log the debug information to the sys:system\timesync.log file. To enable, disable, and set the max log file size, use Monitor | Server Parameters | Time to adjust settings.
You can also enable logging at the console prompt by setting the following:
1. Set timesync debug=15 turns on logging to screen and log file.
2. Set timesync debug=7 turns on logging to screen only.
3. Set timesync debug=0 turns off debug completely.
**** File Copy and Restart *******
1. Unzip the current timesync patch to a temporary directory.
2. Rename the old sys:system\timesync file to *.old
3. Make sure any timesync.msg files that exist in the sys:system directory get DELETED. Do not leave them there as they will cause problems.
4. Copy the new timesync.nlm file to the sys:system directory.
5. Copy the timesync.msg file to the sys:system\nls\4 directory.
6. If time has not been syncing between servers, it may be necessary to do a RESTART SERVER to get everything cleared. Otherwise, you should be able to unload and reload timesync.
NOTE: IF your server is having trouble communicating via NTP, check your TCPIP configuration, make sure you have default routes, etc, configured properly. Also make sure that if you configuring a time source list, that you have configured list=ON
document
| Document Title: | Configuring Timesync with 5.24 versions and higher. |
| Document ID: | 10070057 |
| Solution ID: | NOVL76974 |
| Creation Date: | 15Apr2002 |
| Modified Date: | 18Feb2003 |
| Novell Product Class: | Developer Support Groupware NetWare Novell eDirectory |
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