Advanced Linux Networking

Chapter 10. Maintaining Consistent Time: Time Servers

Every time you set up a computer, you must set its clock. What's worse, computer clocks are imperfect, so they drift from the true time—and they drift at different rates. The result is that, on a network of any size, a few weeks (or possibly just a few hours) after you've set all the computers' clocks to the same time, they'll show annoying differences. Daylight Savings Time can also cause problems, because you'll have to set the computers' clocks again or allow the computers to adjust their own times—a process that can itself cause problems if a computer has more than one OS installed on it. All told, keeping all your systems' clocks synchronized can be an administrative headache. Fortunately, ...