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    NTP times jump abruptly

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • A Offline
      AR15USR
      last edited by

      Wondering if this graph of the times is reasonable. If not, any ideas as to why this would happen?
      I haven't changed the NTP settings in ages fyi..

      Thanks

      alt text

      alt text


      2.6.0-RELEASE

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      • stephenw10S Online
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Hmm, odd. What happened at that date? Did you upgrade maybe?

        Steve

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        • A Offline
          AR15USR
          last edited by

          Well I have been trying to remember anything specific and I can’t. It’s possible it was an upgrade. The auto backups and config backups don’t go back that far to tell by that either.


          2.6.0-RELEASE

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          • stephenw10S Online
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Check the other monitoring graphs, they should go back that far. You might see a jump in the number or processes or states if it rebooted at that point.

            Steve

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            • A Offline
              AR15USR
              last edited by

              Hmm, nothing with that ype of jump either. I did add another VLAN a few weeks earlier than when the NTP jump happened. Not sure that that would cause this though..


              2.6.0-RELEASE

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              • stephenw10S Online
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Does it remain at those levels if you restart the service? Or restart the firewall? Or set different servers even?

                Steve

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                • A Offline
                  AR15USR
                  last edited by

                  I'm experiementing with that now, will report back.

                  FYI I am seeing this in the NTP log, not sure if it matters or not:

                  Mar 20 13:16:12	ntpd	72425	kernel reports TIME_ERROR: 0x2041: Clock Unsynchronized
                  Mar 20 13:16:12	ntpd	72425	kernel reports TIME_ERROR: 0x2041: Clock Unsynchronized
                  

                  2.6.0-RELEASE

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                  • stephenw10S Online
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    I see those at boot, they seem normal. I've never dug into those codes though.

                    Steve

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                    • A Offline
                      AR15USR
                      last edited by

                      Well I change the nist time servers, disabled the VLAN I added back in Jan, restarted the ntpd service. Nothing seemed to make any difference, you can see the pattern over the past 24hrs (Istarted changing stuff at around 12:30 today)

                      alt text

                      I also see this in the log if it matters:

                      Mar 20 15:31:26	ntpd	52237	frequency error 500 PPM exceeds tolerance 500 PPM
                      

                      2.6.0-RELEASE

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                      • T Offline
                        tman222
                        last edited by tman222

                        Hi @AR15USR

                        Just a thought - but could this be an indication of a hardware problem with the firewall itself developing? Have a look at this link, especially 3.3.1.1:

                        http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-s-sw-clocks-quality.htm

                        Hope this helps.

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                        • A Offline
                          AR15USR
                          last edited by

                          I suppose its a possibility. This is a Atom C2758 board thats been on constantly for several years. Maybe..


                          2.6.0-RELEASE

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                          • A Offline
                            AR15USR
                            last edited by

                            Ok, if anyone is interested. Just decided to take a look at the graph again, look what recently happened:

                            alt text


                            2.6.0-RELEASE

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                            • stephenw10S Online
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              Hmm, well that looks better. Weird, anything else logged at that point when the offset suddenly came down?

                              I myself was struggling with an ntp instance that would not ever sync because, it turned out, the system clock was too inaccurate. It's a VM. I eventually managed to get it working as expected by changing the kern.timecounter.hardware value.

                              Selection_601.png

                              Steve

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                              • T Offline
                                tman222
                                last edited by

                                That's indeed quite interesting. Did anything change with the system since then (updates, reboots, etc.), or did this correct all on its own sort of randomly?

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                                • A Offline
                                  AR15USR
                                  last edited by

                                  2 things I can recall: First, a package was recently updated, Snort. Second a device on my network had a system upgrade. I'm not quite sure on the timing of the second as it is controlled remotely. I'm tracking down the details on that...


                                  2.6.0-RELEASE

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                                  • A Offline
                                    AR15USR
                                    last edited by

                                    Ok was definitely not the device upgrade, that didn’t happen till the 29th..


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