Hi there,

My unix box is behind a firewall and I have no access to the firewall, it is currently having time problems so I want to point it at a time server outside of the firewall to keep it's time accurate.

Can anyone think of a way to test connectivity to the time server over port 123 for NTP. I've tried telnet <timeserver> 123 although not understanding NTP I'm not sure of a way to check.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers,
H.

telnet ought to work if the time server allows TCP/IP connections. If it says 'connection refused', the server's either not allowing connections or your firewall blocks it.

telnet doesn't support the ntp protocol, AFAIK.

You need ntpd which is a freebie -
http://www.pool.ntp.org/

Read the how to use page first.

All we need to check for is the ability to connect at all, it doesn't need to understand it. So yeah, if it connects it could print garbage. It's a quick-and-dirty way of testing for a connection.

Thanks for that - it turns out that it didn't have access.Will have to get someone to change the firewall settings. Another way I was told by a networking guy is to run ntpdate -d (in debugging mode)

from the man page:-

-d Enable the debugging mode, in which ntpdate will go through all the steps, but not adjust the local clock. Information useful for general debugging will also be printed.

Many thanks!

H.