I wanted to know which should be the best way to sync time for a linux machine. We have an application server and a database server, both using RHEL 5.8 as the OS. It is important that the time on both these servers match together and also sync with a common time source. As per my knowledge, these are the 2 ways which can be explained as follows considering the common source as instructor.example.com, it can also be assumed that desktop1.example.com & desktop2.example.com are the hostnames of the other 2 machines

1) Add a cron job with the command, ntpdate to sync with the time on instructor.example.com. The cron job could be scheduled once a day something as follows:

Code:

* 1 * * * /usr/sbin/ntpdate -b instructor.example.com

2) Configure the /etc/ntp.conf on the 2 machines, desktop1.example.com & desktop2.example.com to include the line like:

Code:

server instructor.example.com

and line

Code:

peer desktop1.example.com

for desktop2.example.com and vice-versa for desktop1.example.com.

There are few observations in this also:

1) By adding server 0.rhel.pool.ntp.org, it should be aligning the time with public time server but would it be reliable?

2) By including the peer, should it help maintaining the time for desktop1.example.com & desktop2.example.com to be close to each other. This would mean that the 3 machines in picture including the server would have a time close to each other.

I had put this query in another forum but I have not got any replies from that.

I hope my question is clear.

Please revert with the reply to my query.

Regards

---------- Post updated 10-01-13 at 12:03 AM ---------- Previous update was 09-30-13 at 01:29 AM ----------

Request people in this forum to please revert.

Regards