>This is the other problem that NTP is designed to deal with, in 
>addition to keeping the correct time of day. If you're running a 
>properly configured ntpd now, go look at /var/run/ntp.drift or run
>
>	ntpdc -c loopi
>
>and look at the frequency - that's a correction for the local system 
>clock that ntpd is applying by slewing the clock. The closer it is to 
>zero, the better off you are, but the variance (even in nominally 
>identical systems!) is larger than you might think.

speaking of which, does anyone have any idea why my alpha (otherwise
happily running 1.6B) is *consistently* 0.4 seconds off (+/-20%, ahead
or behind the correct time, but never closer to right than that) which
ever upper strata ntp server with which it is currently synced?

this value rarely changes, both with and without ntpd being run
chrooted.  using ntpdate to correct this doesn't help either.

-- 
|-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----|
codewarrior@daemon.org             * "ah!  i see you have the internet
twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown)                that goes *ping*!"
andrew@crossbar.com       * "information is power -- share the wealth."