[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#426238: again info from original reporter

[Mario Frasca]

I've been using my machine all this time and I had to accept these time
jumps / unpredictable skews (these are generated all of a sudden, not
gradually)...  the machine is kept usable by removing the ntpd package
and installing ntpdate, plus the following:

$ grep ntp /etc/rc.local 
nohup sh -c 'while true; do /usr/sbin/ntpdate -b nl.pool.ntp.org 2>&1 | /bin/grep ntpdate >> /root/ntpdate.log 2>&1; sleep 60; done'&

$ tail -n900 /root/ntpdate.log | egrep "offset -?[1-9]"
17 Apr 00:07:20 ntpdate[25489]: step time server 82.98.234.142 offset -64.627824 sec
17 Apr 00:05:34 ntpdate[25540]: step time server 82.98.234.142 offset -170.223636 sec
17 Apr 00:22:04 ntpdate[26136]: step time server 213.154.229.26 offset -151.887714 sec
17 Apr 00:34:18 ntpdate[26570]: step time server 213.239.154.12 offset -124.637596 sec
17 Apr 00:50:53 ntpdate[27179]: step time server 204.9.53.11 offset -42.255862 sec
17 Apr 04:42:11 ntpdate[3137]: step time server 87.238.168.24 offset -56.012333 sec
17 Apr 05:31:55 ntpdate[4868]: step time server 194.109.153.91 offset -113.542144 sec
17 Apr 08:08:22 ntpdate[12154]: step time server 192.87.106.3 offset -159.826720 sec
17 Apr 09:30:25 ntpdate[15901]: step time server 213.239.154.12 offset -157.266750 sec
17 Apr 09:36:20 ntpdate[17673]: step time server 81.171.98.4 offset -161.303546 sec

$ uname -a
Linux croese 2.6.22-3-powerpc #1 Tue Nov 13 15:52:56 UTC 2007 ppc GNU/Linux

the main annoyances are:

sleep n is affected, in the sense that when I want something to sleep
600 seconds, I have no guarantee that there won't be one or more jumps
in time that will make the 600 seconds last 500 or less.  this is really
annoying because it makes it difficult to record things from the radio
from the crontab...  time jumps are unpredictable and can be large.
so to be sure on 10 minutes I must plan 15...

sometimes a time jump happens while I enter my password to unlock the
gnome x-terminal.  in this case I see a warning "timed out" and I have
to redo the procedure, just as if I had fallen asleep for 2 minutes at
the monitor while typing my password...

-- 
[quello che cito] non esprime in alcun modo il mio pensiero personale
 -- Papa Ratzinger