Setting up Time Synchronisation on S8700 Media Server 1

[ReallyRotten]

When you want to set up the S8700 media server to synchronise its time with an NTP server, where is the best place to do that...In Set Server/Timezone or in Configure Server?

I set up our S8700 media server to synch with an NTP server under Configure Server and a couple of months later the time has strayed on the phone by over 1 minute. And I'm not sure which logs to look in to see why it is not synchronising properly...

Any suggestions?

 

[TJStar]

NTP can only be set by using configure server. The options under server date/time have to be set. The OS needs to know what timezone it is in otherwise it uses GMT. The log to check for NTP errors would be syslog.

Normally the way to set up NTP is to set the NTP server address. Then set the time under server date/time. This config order is suggested because of this bit from Installation and Upgrades for Avaya G700 Media Gateway and Avaya S8300 Media Server book number 555-234-100.

"After NTP is enabled, time changes greater than 15 minutes will disrupt the synchronization with
the NTS and NTP will shut down. You need to set the server’s clock now so that synchronization
can take place."

To check periodically the time delay between the client and the server... (to run these command you need access to the linux shell, so use at your own risk)

/usr/sbin/ntpdate -q <server address>
Polls the time server without setting the time

/usr/sbin/ntpdate -d <server address>
compares the local system time with that taken from the NTP server

/usr/sbin/ntpdate -q 132.163.4.101
server 132.163.4.101, stratum 1, offset -28.414988, delay 0.07658
20 May 17:27:05 ntpdate[6353]: step time server 132.163.4.101 offset -28.414988 sec

stratum 1 - server clock
offset - difference in sec between the server an
client
delay - time taken to retrive the request
(132.163.4.101 is the NIST boulder time server)

/usr/sbin/ntpq -p
will display the offsets for each reachable server in milliseconds (ntpdc -p uses seconds instead).

/usr/sbin/ntpdc -c loopinfo
will display the combined offset in seconds, as seen at the last poll

A great site that talks about why sync errors can occur using NTP is

http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-s-trouble.htm#Q-TRB-MON-TIME-DIF.

HTH

-TJ

 

[TJStar]

Another good site is:

http://jaymzworld.yafd.net/pages/linux/pages/ntp.html