Time sync is foobar

[Tom Horsley]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:52:09 -0500
Steven Stern wrote:

>   service ntpd stop
>   ntpdate nist1-chi.ustiming.org
>   service ntpd start
> 
> This morning, the time is once again off.  It appears that ntp is not
> synching time.  I see nothing unusual in /var/log/messages.

NTP suffers from acute malignant optimism about how well the
native computer can keep time. With a clock that is rotten enough,
NTP will never manage to sync. I have had many motherboards
that seem to lose or gain so fast that NTP cannot fix it. I usually
resort to running ntpdate on cron every 5 minutes to get some
vaguely accurate time :-(.