Linux Administration Cookbook

Configuring NTP and the problems we face

In this section, we're going to look at the network time protocol (NTP), and the default setup for a typical installation.

This section assumes a basic understanding of time.

Depending on how much Pratchett you read, your understanding of time may or may not be linear.

We're going to look at a few things. First, we're going to look at what NTP is, what software we use to set it up, and how to test whether your system is using it.

Starting at the top, NTP runs on port 123, and it's the protocol that's used for keeping time in computer systems in sync. This is generally important because we want things like log-timestamps to be consistent between machines, transactions between boxes to have the correct ...