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    NTP times jump abruptly

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

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

      Steve

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      • A
        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
          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
            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
              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
                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
                  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
                    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
                      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
                        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
                          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
                            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
                              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
                                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
                                  AR15USR
                                  last edited by

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


                                  2.6.0-RELEASE

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