ntp.keys(4)						     Kernel Interfaces Manual						       ntp.keys(4)

NAME

       ntp.keys - Network Time Protocol (NTP) authentication key file

DESCRIPTION

       The  NTP  standard specifies an extension to allow verification of the authenticity of received NTP packets and to provide an indication of
       authenticity in outgoing packets.  This is implemented in xntpd using the MD5 algorithm to compute the message-digest.	The  specification
       allows  any  one  of possibly 4 billion keys, numbered with 32-bit key identifiers, to be used to authenticate an association.  The servers
       involved in an association must agree on the key and key identifier used to authenticate their data, though they must each  learn  the  key
       and key identifier independently.  In MD5, the keys are 64 bits (8 bytes).  The xntpd daemon reads its keys from a file specified using the
       -k command line option, or the keys statement in the configuration file.  While key number 0 is fixed by the NTP standard (as 56 zero bits)
       and may not be changed, one or more of the keys numbered 1 through 15 may be arbitrarily set in the keys file.

       One  of the keys may be chosen, by way of the configuration file requestkey statement, to authenticate run time configuration requests made
       using the xntpdc(8) program.  The latter program obtains the key from the terminal as a password, so it is generally appropriate to specify
       the key chosen to be used for this purpose in ASCII format.

       The NTP key file uses the same comment conventions as the configuration file.  Key entries use a fixed format of the form: keyno type key

       In  this format: Is a positive integer.	Is a single character that defines the format the key is given in.  This is always M, representing
       Message Digest (MD5) on Tru64 UNIX systems.  Is the key itself.	The MD5 algorithm key is a 1-to-8 character ASCII string.  Because of  the
       simple  tokenizing routine, you cannot use the following characters in an ASCII key: " " (space), "#" (number sign), "", "0, and " ".  Note
       that both the keys and the authentication scheme (MD5) must be identical between a set of peers sharing the same key number.

EXAMPLES

       The following sample key file shows two defined NTP keys: 2   M	 RIrop8KPPvQvYotM   # MD5 key as a random ASCII  string  14   M    sundial
       # MD5 key as an ASCII string

FILES

       Conventional name of the key file

RELATED INFORMATION

       Commands: ntpdate(8), ntpq(8), xntpd(8), xntpdc(8)

       Files: ntp.conf(4)

       Network Administration delim off

																       ntp.keys(4)