"Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."
~~ Benjamin Franklin ~~
Time syncing with NTP
NTP is used to keep your computer's clock accurate.
For instructions on setting it up, see the link for your OS:
If you're using an OS not listed above, consult the OS documentation or Google for instructions on setting up NTP. The servers you should use are:
- 0.ph.pool.ntp.org
- 1.ph.pool.ntp.org
- 2.ph.pool.ntp.org
- 3.ph.pool.ntp.org
Time syncing with NTP on Windows XP
NTP is a protocol used to synchronize clocks over the Internet. Windows XP includes a tool to automatically update the time from an NTP server every week.
To set up the automatic synchronization, right click on the clock in the System Tray and select "Adjust Date/Time".
On the Internet Time tab, type 0.ph.pool.ntp.org (not the address shown in the picture, that one does not work!).
Click on Update Now, and after a few seconds it should say "The time has been successfully synchronized with 0.ph.pool.ntp.org" followed by the date and time. If this fails, try a different server, or contact the Filipina Rime Project. Otherwise, click OK.
Your computer will now update the time every week at the same time.
Some people may find that Windows' time synchronization system is temperamental and does not always work. If you find this to be the case, we recommend that you install and use Automachron.
Time syncing with NTP on Other Windows
Automachron is a program for Windows to keep your computer's clock accurate.
Download the install file, and run it. Click Next.
Click Yes.
The default is fine, so click Next.
Click Next.
The default is fine, so click Next.
Untick "Create a desktop icon" and click Next.
Click Install.
The program will now install. When it has finished, click Start -> Programs -> Automachron -> Automachron. Click the Host button, type 0.ph.pool.ntp.org (not the address shown in the picture, that one does not work!) in the Network host box, and change the Protocol to SNTP v4. Click OK.
Tick "Run at startup" and "Sync at startup". Type 216000 in the "Sync every" box. Click Sync, to check that it is correctly configured. If no error messages appear, click Close.
Your computer will now update the clock every 6 hours, and on startup.
Time syncing with NTP on MacOS X
We have not yet had the chance to prepare instructions for this; if you feel you could contribute some, please let us know!
Time syncing with NTP on Linux
NTP was originally developed on Unix, so all modern Unix-like systems can run the standard NTP daemon (Version 4). Most systems will already have an easy to install package available.
- Debian: apt-get install ntp-simple ntpdate
- Gentoo: emerge ntp
The NTP daemon is configured in /etc/ntp.conf; ntpdate is configured elsewhere (depending on the distribution - e.g. in Debian it is /etc/default/ntpdate).
The server addresses are:
- 0.ph.pool.ntp.org
- 1.ph.pool.ntp.org
- 2.ph.pool.ntp.org
- 3.ph.pool.ntp.org
How do I use ph.pool.ntp.org?
If you just want to synchronise your computers clock to the network, the configuration file (for the ntpd program from the ntp.org distribution, on any supported operating system - (Linux, *BSD, Windows and even some more exotic systems) is really simple:
rc.conf
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift server 0.pool.ntp.org server 1.pool.ntp.org server 2.pool.ntp.org
The 0, 1, 2 and 3.ph.pool.ntp.org names point to a random set of servers that will change every hour. Make sure your computer's clock is set to something sensible (within a few minutes of the 'true' time) - you could use ntpdate 0.ph.pool.ntp.org, or you could just use the date command and set it to your wristwatch. Start ntpd, and after some time (this could take as long as half an hour!), ntpq -pn should output something like:
avbidder:~$ ntpq -p
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
==============================================================================
+81.6.42.224 193.5.216.14 2 u 68 1024 377 158.995 51.220 50.287
*217.162.232.173 130.149.17.8 2 u 191 1024 176 79.245 3.589 27.454
-129.132.57.95 131.188.3.222 3 u 766 1024 377 22.302 -2.928 0.508
The IP addresses will be different, because you've been assigned random timeservers. The essential thing is that one of the lines starts with an asterisk (*), this means your computer gets the time from the internet - you'll never have to worry about it again!
As ph.pool.ntp.org will assign you timeservers from all over the Philippines, time quality should be ideal. You can again use the 0, 1, 2 or 3 prefixes. If you know timeservers that are really close to you (measured by network distance, with traceroute or ping), time probably will be even better.
Additional Notes
If you have a static IP address and a reasonable Internet connection (bandwidth is not so important, but it should be stable and not too highly loaded), please consider donating your server to the server pool. It doesn't cost you more than a few hundred bytes per second traffic, but you help this project survive. Please read the joining page for more information.
If your Internet provider has a timeserver, or if you know of a good timeserver near you, you should use that and not this list - you'll probably get better time and you'll use fewer network resources. If you know only one timeserver near you, you can of course use that and two from pool.ntp.org or so.
It can rarely happen that you are assigned the same timeserver twice - just restarting the ntp server usually solves this problem. If you use a country zone, please note that it may be because there is only one server known in the project - better use a continental zone in that case. You can browse the zones to see how many servers we have in each zone.
Be friendly. Many servers are provided by volunteers, and almost all time servers are really file or mail or web-servers which just happen to also run ntp. So don't use more than three time servers in your configuration, and don't play dirty tricks with burst or minpoll - all you will gain is that this project will be stopped sooner or later.
Make sure that the time zone configuration of your computer is correct. ntpd itself does not do anything about the time zones, it just uses UTC internally.
If you are synchronizing a network to pool.ntp.org, please set up one of your computers as a time server and synchronize the other computers to that one. (you'll have some reading to do - it's not difficult though. And there's always the comp.protocols.time.ntp newsgroup.)
At this point, I'd like to thank those donating their time and timeservers to this network.
Sources:
http://csg.trinhall.cam.ac.uk/tips/ntp/
http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/use.html
http://www.ntp.org/
