Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"

Unruh wrote:
> Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
> out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
> ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
> there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
> Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
> steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"

You can find links to the official NTP documentation along with other 
information here: http://www.ntp.org/documentation.html

The official NTP docs are in html format only.

-- 
Dennis Hilberg, Jr.      timekeeper(at)dennishilberg(dot)com
NTP Server Information:  http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.php

Unruh wrote:
> Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
> out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
> ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
> there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
> Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
> steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
> 
> 

You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)

This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:

logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
statistics peerstats clockstats
filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable

On 2008-01-04, Unruh <unruh-spam@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:

> Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp
> write out the statistics on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man
> page of ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the
> source that there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options.
> Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some
> broken

The Distribution Documentation for the current development
version of the NTP Reference Implementation is at
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/index.html. This documentation
is regularly updated to reflect the feature set in the current
development version and may not be correct for older, or stable,
versions of NTP. Links to this documentation are at:

	* http://www.ntp.org/documentation.html
	* http://support.ntp.org/docs

Please refer to those URLs for links to other NTP-related documentation.

The Distribution Documentation snap-shot for any release of the NTP
Reference Implementataion will be found in the html directory in the
source tree.

The NTP FAQ is available at http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-a-faq.htm

Community Supported Documentation for the NTP Reference Implementation
may be found at http://support.ntp.org/support

Your OS may include man pages for NTP. Please keep in mind that
these man pages are a third-party conversion from the Distribution
Documentation and may not be correct or up-to-date.

Your OS may have installed NTP documentation in /usr/doc or
/usr/share/doc or some similar location.

-- 
Steve Kostecke <kostecke@ntp.org>
NTP Public Services Project - http://support.ntp.org/

"Dennis Hilberg, Jr." <timekeeper@dennishilberg.com.invalid> writes:

>Unruh wrote:
>> Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>> out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>> ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>> there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>> Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>> steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"

>You can find links to the official NTP documentation along with other 
>information here: http://www.ntp.org/documentation.html

>The official NTP docs are in html format only.

And impossible to wade through. Could you tell me where the statistics and
the peerstats directives are actually discussed? Trying to look at those
docs gives me no hint. 

Ie, what is needed is like in the man page-- a list of the config variables
and options with a brief description. 

"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:

>Unruh wrote:
>> Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>> out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>> ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>> there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>> Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>> steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>> 
>> 

>You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)

>This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:

>logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>statistics peerstats clockstats
>filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable

But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
statistics peerstats
and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
my statsdir) 
What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
I can easily find that. Does it exist?

Unruh wrote:
> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>Unruh wrote:
>>
>>>Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>>out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>>ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>>there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>>Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>>steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>>>
>>>
>>
> 
>>You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>>little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)
> 
> 
>>This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:
> 
> 
>>logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>>statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>>statistics peerstats clockstats
>>filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>>filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
> 
> 
> But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
> statistics peerstats
> and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
> my statsdir) 
> What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
> I can easily find that. Does it exist?
> 
> 
> 
> 

filegen creates a new file daily or weekly or monthly. . . .
These files can eat many megabytes of disk space if you let them.  If 
you're not prepared to analyze and summarize all the data, do yourself a 
favor and skip creating the files.  The tools to do so are included in 
the ntpd distribution but you do have to find them, and use them and 
then clean up the obsolete files. . . .

"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:

>Unruh wrote:
>> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>> 
>> 
>>>Unruh wrote:
>>>
>>>>Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>>>out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>>>ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>>>there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>>>Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>>>steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>> 
>>>You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>>>little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)
>> 
>> 
>>>This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:
>> 
>> 
>>>logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>>>statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>>>statistics peerstats clockstats
>>>filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>>>filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
>> 
>> 
>> But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
>> statistics peerstats
>> and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
>> my statsdir) 
>> What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
>> I can easily find that. Does it exist?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 

>filegen creates a new file daily or weekly or monthly. . . .
>These files can eat many megabytes of disk space if you let them.  If 
>you're not prepared to analyze and summarize all the data, do yourself a 
>favor and skip creating the files.  The tools to do so are included in 
>the ntpd distribution but you do have to find them, and use them and 
>then clean up the obsolete files. . . .


OK, I guess daily is the default if you just use the 
statistics peerstats
But the key question is where in the world is the documentation for all of
this?

Unruh wrote:
> "Dennis Hilberg, Jr." <timekeeper@dennishilberg.com.invalid> writes:
[]
>> The official NTP docs are in html format only.
>
> And impossible to wade through. Could you tell me where the
> statistics and the peerstats directives are actually discussed?
> Trying to look at those docs gives me no hint.
>
> Ie, what is needed is like in the man page-- a list of the config
> variables and options with a brief description.

Try using a search engine, e.g. Google with:

  site:www.eecis.udel.edu peerstats

I agree that it's not always easy to find things in the HTML, but that's a 
function of the content, not the document format.  Section 8.1.2 discusses 
peerstats and loopstats:

  http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/ntpfaq/NTP-s-trouble.htm


BTW: none of the systems I use support "man pages" - but they can all read 
HTML documents, so please don't take the HTML away!

Cheers,
David 

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
[]
> filegen creates a new file daily or weekly or monthly. . . .
> These files can eat many megabytes of disk space if you let them.  If
> you're not prepared to analyze and summarize all the data, do
> yourself a favor and skip creating the files.  The tools to do so are
> included in the ntpd distribution but you do have to find them, and
> use them and then clean up the obsolete files. . . .

I wrote a small utility I have found very handy on my systems:

  http://www.david-taylor.myby.co.uk/software/disk.html#TrimTree

It allows you to delete files matching a wildcard mask which are more than 
a certain number of days old, so you could, for example, keep just a 
week's worth of loopstats by running a nightly command:

  trimtree   7   C:\Tools\NTP\etc\   loopstats.2*

It's helped a few other folk as well.

Cheers,
David 

Unruh wrote:
> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
> 
>> Unruh wrote:
>>> Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>> out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>> ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>> there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>> Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>> steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>>>
>>>
> 
>> You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>> little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)
> 
>> This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:
> 
>> logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>> statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>> statistics peerstats clockstats
>> filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>> filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
> 
> But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
> statistics peerstats
> and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
> my statsdir) 
> What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
> I can easily find that. Does it exist?

Those are explained on the "Monitoring Options" page, here: 
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/monopt.html

You might try using the site map for the docs.  It was recently added (I 
think) and is a lot of help. 
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/sitemap.html

-- 
Dennis Hilberg, Jr.      timekeeper(at)dennishilberg(dot)com
NTP Server Information:  http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.php

Unruh wrote:
> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>Unruh wrote:
>>
>>>"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Unruh wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>>>>out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>>>>ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>>>>there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>>>>Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>>>>steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>>>>little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>>>This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:
>>>
>>>
>>>>logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>>>>statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>>>>statistics peerstats clockstats
>>>>filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>>>>filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
>>>
>>>
>>>But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
>>>statistics peerstats
>>>and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
>>>my statsdir) 
>>>What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
>>>I can easily find that. Does it exist?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
> 
>>filegen creates a new file daily or weekly or monthly. . . .
>>These files can eat many megabytes of disk space if you let them.  If 
>>you're not prepared to analyze and summarize all the data, do yourself a 
>>favor and skip creating the files.  The tools to do so are included in 
>>the ntpd distribution but you do have to find them, and use them and 
>>then clean up the obsolete files. . . .
> 
> 
> 
> OK, I guess daily is the default if you just use the 
> statistics peerstats
> But the key question is where in the world is the documentation for all of
> this?
> 
> 
> 

Same place as the rest of the doc.  Have you looked in the "html" 
directory??  The stuff will display in your browser if you use the 
FILE://... syntax.  The HTML is formatted so as to be almost as readable 
  as plain text if you open it in an editor.

On 2008-01-05, Unruh <unruh-spam@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:

> OK, I guess daily is the default if you just use the statistics
> peerstats But the key question is where in the world is the
> documentation for all of this?

http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/monopt.html

Since you know the site where the Distribution Documentation is based
(from my previous article) you could search for this information on Google
as:

site:www.eecis.udel.edu+keyword+keyword

-- 
Steve Kostecke <kostecke@ntp.org>
NTP Public Services Project - http://support.ntp.org/

"Dennis Hilberg, Jr." <timekeeper@dennishilberg.com.invalid> writes:

>Unruh wrote:
>> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>> 
>>> Unruh wrote:
>>>> Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>>> out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>>> ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>>> there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>>> Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>>> steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>>>>
>>>>
>> 
>>> You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>>> little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)
>> 
>>> This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:
>> 
>>> logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>>> statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>>> statistics peerstats clockstats
>>> filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>>> filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
>> 
>> But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
>> statistics peerstats
>> and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
>> my statsdir) 
>> What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
>> I can easily find that. Does it exist?

>Those are explained on the "Monitoring Options" page, here: 
>http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/monopt.html

Ah. Finally. Yes, that is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for and
could not find. Thanks. Those configuration pages should all be in the
ntp.conf man page, instead of only some of them.


>You might try using the site map for the docs.  It was recently added (I 
>think) and is a lot of help. 
>http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/sitemap.html

>-- 
>Dennis Hilberg, Jr.      timekeeper(at)dennishilberg(dot)com
>NTP Server Information:  http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.php

"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:

>Unruh wrote:
>> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>> 
>> 
>>>Unruh wrote:
>>>
>>>>"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Unruh wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>>>>>out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>>>>>ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>>>>>there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>>>>>Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>>>>>steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>>>>>little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>>>>>statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>>>>>statistics peerstats clockstats
>>>>>filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>>>>>filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
>>>>statistics peerstats
>>>>and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
>>>>my statsdir) 
>>>>What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
>>>>I can easily find that. Does it exist?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>> 
>>>filegen creates a new file daily or weekly or monthly. . . .
>>>These files can eat many megabytes of disk space if you let them.  If 
>>>you're not prepared to analyze and summarize all the data, do yourself a 
>>>favor and skip creating the files.  The tools to do so are included in 
>>>the ntpd distribution but you do have to find them, and use them and 
>>>then clean up the obsolete files. . . .
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> OK, I guess daily is the default if you just use the 
>> statistics peerstats
>> But the key question is where in the world is the documentation for all of
>> this?
>> 
>> 
>> 

>Same place as the rest of the doc.  Have you looked in the "html" 
>directory??  The stuff will display in your browser if you use the 
>FILE://... syntax.  The HTML is formatted so as to be almost as readable 
>  as plain text if you open it in an editor.

Thanks.

Unruh,

NTP for Dummies is in the official NTP documentations linked from 
www.ntp.org. I recently rewrote many of those pages, which are still 
under construction. Dummies really should read the first paragraph on 
the home page. For Dummies there is a site map page containing a number 
of collections grouped by topic. Dummies might choose the ntpd page from 
the Program Manual Pages collection, then the Monitoring Options on that 
page. If that wade doesn't get your feet wet, you might find useful 
hints elsewhere on the www.ntp.org site.

Dave

Unruh wrote:
> "Dennis Hilberg, Jr." <timekeeper@dennishilberg.com.invalid> writes:
> 
> 
>>Unruh wrote:
>>
>>>Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>>out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>>ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>>there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>>Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>>steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
> 
> 
>>You can find links to the official NTP documentation along with other 
>>information here: http://www.ntp.org/documentation.html
> 
> 
>>The official NTP docs are in html format only.
> 
> 
> And impossible to wade through. Could you tell me where the statistics and
> the peerstats directives are actually discussed? Trying to look at those
> docs gives me no hint. 
> 
> Ie, what is needed is like in the man page-- a list of the config variables
> and options with a brief description. 
> 

Unrug,

Please read the first paragraph on documentation home page. It will tell 
you why there is no man page for the ntp.conf file. Now try the 
Configuration Command and Options collection.

Dave

Unruh wrote:

> "Dennis Hilberg, Jr." <timekeeper@dennishilberg.com.invalid> writes:
> 
> 
>>Unruh wrote:
>>
>>>"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Unruh wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Where is there ntp documentation? For example I wanted to have ntp write
>>>>>out the statistics  on its peers etc. I looked everywhere-- man page of
>>>>>ntp, ntp.conf, etc, and finally discovered by looking at the source that
>>>>>there seem to be a huge bunch of undocumented options. 
>>>>>Or are they documented somewhere in that filing cabinette down some broken
>>>>>steps in a flooded basement, behind a door labeled "Beware of Tigers"
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>>>You'll find the secret staircase at ntp.org.  The humidity may be a 
>>>>little high in the basement but it's not actually wet.  ;-)
>>>
>>>>This snippet from my ntp.conf might help:
>>>
>>>>logfile /var/ntp/ntp.log
>>>>statsdir /var/ntp/ntpstats/
>>>>statistics peerstats clockstats
>>>>filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
>>>>filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable
>>>
>>>But where did you find those options? for example I finally did 
>>>statistics peerstats
>>>and the system set up a daily and total couple of files in /var/log/ntp (
>>>my statsdir) 
>>>What does filegen do and mean? Do I need it? I should have some docs where
>>>I can easily find that. Does it exist?
> 
> 
>>Those are explained on the "Monitoring Options" page, here: 
>>http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/monopt.html
> 
> 
> Ah. Finally. Yes, that is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for and
> could not find. Thanks. Those configuration pages should all be in the
> ntp.conf man page, instead of only some of them.
> 
> 
> 
>>You might try using the site map for the docs.  It was recently added (I 
>>think) and is a lot of help. 
>>http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/sitemap.html
> 
> 
>>-- 
>>Dennis Hilberg, Jr.      timekeeper(at)dennishilberg(dot)com
>>NTP Server Information:  http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.php

On Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:19:04 +0000, Steve Kostecke wrote:
> The NTP FAQ is available at http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-a-faq.htm

Thanks.
Is there any documentation of the public graphs? 

For instance, my server is at 
http://www.pool.ntp.org/scores/70.184.242.241

I'm not sure what the 'offset' mean. Recently my graph shows lots of blue
above the Y axis, I have no idea what that's telling me.

Pat

I'm just curious if anyone has come across any current (3rd party) RPMs for
RHEL/CentOS. I run a mix of versions 3, 4, and 5, some 32bit and some 64bit.

I was playing around building some RPMs updating the patch files from one of
the older versions, and even though that worked I noticed there were quite a
few other updates so I used a SRPM from the FC9 branch that used 4.2.4p4 and
made minor generic changes. It's been running fine so far on a CentOS 5
server, tomorrow I'm going to update a couple other machines and see how
that goes.

If nobody knows of any source and if there is interest I can share the RPMs
and / or submit them to a 3rd party repository (like rpmforge) and keep a
more official branch going that keeps up to date with NTP releases.

Jason

Pat Farrell wrote:
> On Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:19:04 +0000, Steve Kostecke wrote:
>> The NTP FAQ is available at http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-a-faq.htm
> 
> Thanks.
> Is there any documentation of the public graphs? 
> 
> For instance, my server is at 
> http://www.pool.ntp.org/scores/70.184.242.241
> 
> I'm not sure what the 'offset' mean. Recently my graph shows lots of blue
> above the Y axis, I have no idea what that's telling me.
> 
> Pat

The pool score/offset graphs are explained at the bottom of your server's 
score page where it says "What do the graphs mean?"

Quoted from the score page:

The Score graph

A couple of times an hour the pool system checks the time from your server 
and compares it to the local time. Points are deducted if the server can't 
be reached or if the time offset is more than 100ms (as measured relatively 
crudely from the monitoring systems). More points are deducted the bigger 
the offset is.

When the score goes down the background color in the top part of the chart 
will reflect how severely the "outage" is. The color scale goes from blue 
(very little) to yellow to orange to red (the server is several seconds off 
or unreachable). Because of how the graph is averaged out, you can't always 
infer what happened from the color. It's only meant as a tool to visualize 
trends. For more exact details of what the monitoring system found you can 
click on the CSV link.

The Offset graph

The monitoring system works roughly like an SNTP (RFC 2030) client, so it is 
more susceptible by random network latencies between the server and the 
monitoring system than a regular ntpd client would be. In other words: Don't 
be alarmed by the occasional large offset and please don't use the offset as 
an absolute performance metric.

-- 
Dennis Hilberg, Jr.     \  timekeeper(at)dennishilberg(dot)com
NTP Server Information:  \  http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.php

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:51:35 -0800, Dennis Hilberg, Jr. wrote:
> The pool score/offset graphs are explained at the bottom of your server's 
> score page where it says "What do the graphs mean?"

Thanks, but I don't understand what it means. Look at my server's graphs,
there is tons of blue above the Y axis. The score doesn't seem to indicate
any downtime, and the server is up and the ISP connection is there.
(I could believe that the ISP's latency is flakey, but that's why I'm
asking).

I've also never seen the offset graph be so radical with large swings.
What could explain that?

Thanks
pat

Pat Farrell wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:51:35 -0800, Dennis Hilberg, Jr. wrote:
>> The pool score/offset graphs are explained at the bottom of your server's 
>> score page where it says "What do the graphs mean?"
> 
> Thanks, but I don't understand what it means. Look at my server's graphs,
> there is tons of blue above the Y axis. The score doesn't seem to indicate
> any downtime, and the server is up and the ISP connection is there.
> (I could believe that the ISP's latency is flakey, but that's why I'm
> asking).
> 
> I've also never seen the offset graph be so radical with large swings.
> What could explain that?
> 
> Thanks
> pat

Well red is the most severe, and indicates that your server was unavailable 
for whatever reason (or has an offset of several seconds), which is why 
there is missing data on the "Offset history" graph.

Blue is the least severe, and typically means your server has an offset of 
~100ms or so.  Points are deducted based on how far off your server is. 
Less than 100ms, no deductions.  Server unavailable or off by several 
seconds, the most deductions.

If you view the CSV log, it's clear your server was "available", but was 
reporting a time that was off quite a bit by ntp standards.  The large 
offset swings could indicate that your connection was heavily loaded during 
that time frame.

-- 
Dennis Hilberg, Jr.     \  timekeeper(at)dennishilberg(dot)com
NTP Server Information:  \  http://saturn.dennishilberg.com/ntp.php