Allways the right time on dockstar

Hi all,
I asked this question before, but all I got was hints, that this question is stupid. At least this question was deleted and that's good, because the answers were not very kind. So I try again now a little more specific:

What will be the best way to have always the right time on the dockstar. I know, that there is no hardware clock. The time should be set correctly each boot and then it should not differ more than a few seconds. That's important for some database operations. The system will be an "always on" system. Setting the time once at boot time is not enough.

Any recommendations?

Greetings
Thomas

The 'ntp' package is the easiest, in my opinion. Install it, and it's already configured to start at bootup, set the clock from a remote pool of servers, and keep the clock up to date while it's running. That's how I keep my dockstar's clock set. You can also install 'ntpdate' to set the time one time manually from the Internet (run the command /usr/sbin/ntpdate-debian to do that; the ntpd daemon can't be running at the time, so you'd have to run "/etc/init.d/ntp stop; ntpdate-debian; /etc/init.d/ntp start").

Hi ayrlander,
thx for this answer. For what do I need ntpdate. If I get you right, the ntp package is solving the problem?! Is it enough to install ntp and reconfigure the ime zone?

apt-get install ntp
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Greetings,
Thomas

Feel free to try it without installing ntpdate; the man page says that it should work. But sometimes, even with ntp installed and running, I notice my time drifts. It shouldn't, but it does. (This is true on desktops and laptops, too; it's not something specific with the Dockstar.) So I like having ntpdate installed just so once in a while, I can run it manually only if I notice that my clock has drifted by a couple of minutes.

What about chrony for keeping the time in snyc?

I've never used chrony, so I can't say one way or the other about it. I also don't know if it comes configured out of the box, like ntp does. You can always give it a try, and if it doesn't work out, uninstall it and go back to ntp (which does usually work, just not 100% for some odd reason). Ntp is by far the most common tool for doing the job, though.

I thought of chrony in addition to ntp?!

The chrony and ntp packages conflict with each other, so aptitude and apt-get won't let you install one without removing the other.

I use the openntpd package on my DockStar. It's an NTP implementation from OpenBSD that is much smaller than the original ntp (about one-tenth the size).

i dont use ntp and not chrony and not openntpd
anyone can use what he wants
i prefer rdate mouch faster (for me)