Topic: netdate?

[Colin Mattoon]

Hi:

This may be more a RedHat 6.0 question than an e-smith question, but since my e-smith server is the only RedHat machine I have, I thought I'd ask here first...

The LAN behind my e-smith server consists of file servers and  workstations.  Some of the workstations are non Y2K compliant, and some of the file servers have lousy clocks.  I designated one server to act as a time server for the LAN, and it runs, as a cron job  netdate and then hwclock --systohc a couple times each day to keep in sync with time servers on the Internet.

The non Y2K compliant workstations run these utilities every hour, using the aforementioned file server as their time server.

However, I cannot find the netdate utility in the e-smith machine, and I would like to keep it closely synched with the rest of the LAN.  As it is, I can set the date and time manually through the e-smith manager, or log in as root.

So, where is netdate hiding?  Whereis netdate reveals nothing.

[Charlie Brady]

Colin Mattoon wrote:

> So, where is netdate hiding?  Whereis netdate reveals nothing.

Sorry, I don't know what netdate is exactly. It's not on my RedHat system. However, there is an "rdate", and that probably
does what you want.

Install the rdate RPM from RedHat 6.0, then put a cron job in which periodically does "rdate -s trusted.system.name".

A future release of e-smith will include an option to keep the
server time in synch with a time master using Network Time Protocol.

Charlie

[Colin Mattoon]

Thanks, I'll look into rdate when I get to the office this morning.  I suspect rdate is about the same utility as netdate.

As to what "netdate" is, I don't really know myself. It comes with a stock Slackware Linux distribution, it works OK, -- but where to get it, or how you might use it, or if it is better than rdate  -- I haven't a clue.  I just "stumbled across it" one day.

Anyhow, thanks again -- I'm sure rdate will do just fine. I didn't know it existed.

Colin

[Colin Mattoon]

Charlie:

Rather than risk trashing my gateway, I tried rdate on a 486 machine that already had RH 6.0 installed...seems to work fine, again -- thank you.

FYI (Since you are planning to add the capability): The man page for netdate in Slackware refers to RFC 868, same as man rdate in RH 6.0.  They are similar, the primary difference (in the man pages at least) is that netdate allows either TCP or UDP protocol, and that netdate clearly provides a means to query multiple time servers to help ensure that the machine is then set to the right time -- whereas if I am reading man rdate correctly, it must use TCP and query a single time server -- I presume netdate queries multiple servers, if desired, to prevent your local machine from resetting it's clock to a time server that has gone "blinky" -- you can pick several and it will reject the obvious error.

Aside from that, it doesn't look like there is much to choose between them within a LAN -- and since rdate appears to be working OK, I'll install it on the e-smith machine and point it at my own LAN's time server. But in the future, if the e-smith machine is to act as the time server for the LAN, maybe a query to multiple servers might be desirable?

Colin