Configuring a Linux machine to synchronized time

Time synchronization is very important in any distributed computing environment. Many tools, including mail, NFS, Samba, etc, will not work in an ideal fashion without synchronized clocks. This document shows you how to set up your linux box to synchronize to the network time servers.

While it is possible to run a ntp daemon to maintain synchronization super-accurately, this eats up a meg of memory. Thus I recommend the following cron job strategy.

  1. Using Yast or other methods, install the 'xntp' packtage from series 'n'.

  2. Become the root user.

  3. Open the file /etc/rc.config in an editor, and change the XNTP_INITIAL_UPDATE variable to the following: 
    XNTP_INITIAL_UPDATE="ntp1.suse.com ntp2.suse.com"
    These are the two timeservers on our network. Please note that the spacing must match the above line _exactly_.

  4. As root, copy the file /home/shared/is/time-sync/time-sync to the directory /etc/cron.hourly .

That's it.

Created jan.19.2000 / Joshua Rodman <jrodman@suse.com>