time issues

[ImAMacGuy]

We have our internal time server that the macs are all set to use, but it seems like even though they are set to use it, the time is still getting a skewed. If we go back into the time/date settings and let it sit there, it will eventually re-sync itself, but by that point it's broken our Symantec VIP client for our VPN tokens and we need to delete the vip and redo it.

I guess my question is how can we force the time to sync more often to ensure the devices are not getting skewed.

[RobertHammen]

I wrote a script that does a time sync, and a LaunchDaemon which runs the script every 5 minutes.

Had a publishing client where, even though all of the Macs were pointed to their internal time servers, the time would drift enough that sometimes opening an InDesign document on a server from a different workstation, images would report "modified". After using that script/LaunchDaemon combo, the problem went away.

The script was simple:

#!/bin/sh
ntpdate -u ntp.company.com

The LaunchDaemon looked like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
   <plist version="1.0">
   <dict>
       <key>Label</key>
       <string>com.company.timeset</string>
       <key>ProgramArguments</key>
       <array>
           <string>/Library/Scripts/timeset.sh</string>
       </array>
       <key>StartInterval</key>
       <integer>300</integer>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/var/log/ntplog.log</string>
   </dict>
   </plist>

[Look]

Dual boot machines will pretty much always lose their time. Windows and OS X have different ways of maintaining and displaying the time.
You pretty much want to have an ntp query run every startup otherwise things go awry on the OS X side (especially if your AD bound), havn't really found a need to run it more often than that.

[guidotti]

Yes, I would just run that command every few minutes with a Launch Daemon if it's that critical. I would question why the time is getting skewed that much over the course of a day. I point our devices at the internal time server, and as long as they are on the network at least once a week, they don't seem to go off more than a second max. Right now, I just tried the ntpdate command and my skew offset was .003 seconds.

[ImAMacGuy]

i thought i had it figured out, but ... I don't.

I have 3 servers I want to use, 2 internal and 1 external. i tried the ntpdate -u server1, server2, ext and it said "no server suitable for synchronization found". then I tried ntpdate -u server1,server2,ext (removing the spaces after the ,) and then it just said no servers can be used...

[guidotti]

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=6857

Try this solution.