Skip to main content
Question

NTP update after imaging...

  • January 24, 2011
  • 8 replies
  • 21 views
A
  • Anonymous

Hello All.

Using casper 7.3.1 and imaging machines to 10.6.4.

Today I ran into a batch of laptops that failed to bind to Active Directory during their post-imaging setup. I think I narrowed it down to a time difference, which has happened before. The laptops, fresh from Apple and never booted, were off by around 8 minutes after imaging took place.

I do have a script which sets the NTP server to our main AD domain controller, but it doesn't seem to actually do a time update. To set the time Server I use:
systemsetup -setNetworkTimeServer dc1 -setUsingNetworkTime on

It didn't seem to update through at least one restart. It did happen fine when I went into the time settings.

Is there something that I could add to the script that would force the update to actually happen? it looks like ntpdate or ntpd -q? Anyone have any experience doing this?

Thanks!
Aaron

    8 replies

    E
    Forum|alt.badge.img+21
    • ernstcs
    • Contributor
    • January 24, 2011

    doing:

    ntpdate <server>

    Should do an update. Helpful for when going back to Mac from bootcamp, if
    you're not changing how Windows uses UTC.

    Hopefully the socket isn't open already. =)

    Craig E

    J
    Forum|alt.badge.img+6
    • jmclaughlin
    • Contributor
    • January 24, 2011

    I've actually been experiencing the same problems with all our white
    MacBook orders. It seems that everything is off by 6+ minutes. I've even
    emailed Apple and gotten nothing back. Regardless, I've tried doing an
    ntpdate just before binding my machines to AD but I couldn't manage to
    open the socket connection in time. I'd also be very happy if someone
    else took care of this one.

    John McLaughlin
    Technical Support Specialist
    Newton Public Schools

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img+17
    • CasperSally
    • Honored Contributor
    • January 24, 2011

    We also used a simple script in past years, but it wasn't working this year (10.6)
    We modified our script (below) and so far the issue hasn't reappeared .. we actually print the current time to log file before binding because the issue was pretty widespread as a troubleshooting step - you probably don't need that

    #set date, time asap

    TIMEZONE="America/New_York"

    TIMESERVER="timeserver"

    SetDateAndTime () {

    systemsetup -settimezone "$TIMEZONE"

    systemsetup -setusingnetworktime off

    #backing up old NTP config

    mv /private/etc/ntp.conf /private/etc/ntp.conf.date +%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S

    echo "server $TIMESERVER" > /private/etc/ntp.conf

    systemsetup -setusingnetworktime on

    sleep 5 #let the clock change before running date

    date > /Library/Logs/CurrentTimeBeforeBind.log

    }

    SetDateAndTime

    J
    Forum|alt.badge.img+24
    • jarednichols
    • Valued Contributor
    • January 24, 2011

    For what it's worth, we've never had NTP/clock skew issues with our images in 10.5 or 10.6.

    j
    --
    Jared F. Nichols
    Desktop Engineer, Client Services
    Information Services Department
    MIT Lincoln Laboratory
    244 Wood Street
    Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
    781.981.5436

    A
    • Anonymous
    • January 25, 2011

    Interesting. How are you doing the source image? Have the machines been booted before?

    The only time that I get it is when I take a machine out of the box, never having booted or plugged into the network, and image it. My netrestore image is a "clean" os image which has never been booted. After imaging it boots, gets accounts added, ARD and SSH configured - all through post image scripts.

    J
    Forum|alt.badge.img+24
    • jarednichols
    • Valued Contributor
    • January 25, 2011

    We unbox and re-image directly. Our image uses the 10.6 RTM disc as the base and then applies the latest combo update straightaway. Our base OS package (the priority 1 package) is run like an install, not like a laydown of an initially setup machine. It's all fresh install. NTP assignment and timezone setting actually happens upon the reboot after imaging with a script that runs networksetup for those.

    j
    --
    Jared F. Nichols
    Desktop Engineer, Client Services
    Information Services Department
    MIT Lincoln Laboratory
    244 Wood Street
    Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
    781.981.5436

    T
    Forum|alt.badge.img+31
    • tlarkin
    • Honored Contributor
    • January 25, 2011

    in my post image script I use this line and it works for us 100%

    /usr/sbin/systemsetup -setnetworktimeserver mytimserver.com

    Though I just input the IP address of the NTP server because it is one that doesn't use DNS currently here

    A
    • Anonymous
    • February 16, 2011

    John

    Processes I have used

    Use an rc.local file
    This file have to be written out into the /etc directory and have executable permissions, also ensure it is written out with root:wheel ownership.
    You could put the rc.local into a package and deploy as part of the system

    The code below has the dashes to indicate where word wrap could occur

    Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement