[SunHELP] Synching time with NT machines

[Sheldon T. Hall]

In Message: 3 From: OFrayman <OFrayman at VerticalAlliance.com> To:
"'sunhelp at sunhelp.org'" <sunhelp at sunhelp.org> on Wed, 31 Oct 2001
14:41:04 -0500 ...

>
> I have been trying to use rdate to sync times with my NT boxes, but I get
> connetion refused.... Please help!!
>

I found that the easy way to do this was to run the Solaris machine as a
time server and synch the NT boxes to it, rather than the other way around.

On Solaris, either run xntpd (see the man pages for details) _or_ add a
proper ntpdate command to your root crontab.  xntpd would be more accurate,
but wants more network resources.

On the NT boxes, use the scheduler or the "AT" command to run a "NET TIME"
command periodically.  NET TIME has an undocumented "/yes" option to
suppress prompts so you can run it this way.

On the PCs, I run "netdate" which, although its author says is obsolete, is
an excellent freeware time-setter.  It would be a good alternative for NT,
too, if your site's policies allow you to run outside freeware on servers.

So, my little site is a "time tree."  The Solaris box synchs to a number of
remote Stratun 2 time servers, and I synch the NT boxes and desktop PCs from
the Solaris box.

-Shel