Return to nwtips.htm
NW 6.x has not had significant time drift
issues that I know about. Its
TIMESYNC.NLM can sync to an NTP source, although you may still prefer to use SNTPCLNT (see below).
NW 6.5 includes XNTPD.NLM, an NTP
server. However, people are apparently
still having issues with it (as of NW65sp2).
If you have at least one
IDE drive (CD-ROM?) and/or have IDEATA.HAM loaded, install IDEATA.HAM v3.10d
(available in OS5PT2A/SBS5PT2A, see below). While I’ve had trouble with later
versions (3.10g and 3.11), the latest version is available from http://developer.novell.com/devres/storage/drivers/index.html
- Novell, Use at your own risk since these are developmental
drivers.
Get the updated IDECD.CDM
and IDEHD.CDM while you're there. If you don't have any IDE drives, but
IDEATA.HAM is loaded, try unloading it. Install these drivers (they need to
replace the ones on the DOS partition) and your problem will most likely go
away (it may not help with certain UDMA controllers, particularly those on some
motherboards that are more than 2-3 years old).
If you're using NW51sp2a or
NW5sp6a (not NW51sp3), you might also try OS5PT2A.EXE from http://support.novell.com/servlet/tidfinder/2958591 or SBS5PT2A from http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/2958589.htm
You can also try to
downgrade TIMESYNC.NLM to v5.15 (from NW5sp5/NW51sp1) or upgrade to or the
latest version (5.24o as of 2002-02-20), the ones between 5.15 and 5.24o have
been troublesome. Use Novell’s File Finder http://support.novell.com/filefinder/
TIMESYNC.NLM versions 5.09
and later include NTP client support in them, although only versions 5.15 and
5.24o are reported to work reasonably well. See http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/10011518.htm or search Novell’s Knowledgebase
for "NTP and timesync" for configuration information. Note that (at
least with TIMESYNC.NLM versions prior to 5.24o) you may have difficulty
getting this to work even if you have configured it correctly. That’s one of
the main reasons I recommend SNTPCNLT.NLM (see below).
This is a known problem with certain SP
levels on NW 5.0. You should have SP6a
installed on the server. These are
additional changes to deploy after installing Support Pack 6a (the most recent
SP) on a NetWare 5.0 server. Do not
reboot until after step 3.
1) Add "set client file caching enabled=off" to startup.ncf2) set "dirty disk cache delay time" to 0.1 seconds 3) NICID157D.EXE (128-bit for USA and most other countries) or NICI157E.EXE (56-bit for countries the USA restricts cryptographic exports to)
4a) For NetWare 5.0 OS5PT2A.EXE4b) For SBS 5.0 SBS5PT2A.EXE 5) DS758.EXE or later (for DS 7) DS885C.EXE (for DS 8) DS8530C.EXE (for eDir 8.5) 6) SLP107E.EXE 7) NDP2XP8.EXE (If you use NDPS) 8) WSOCK4F.EXE or WSOCK4G.EXE 9) TS524O.EXE (the letter 'O', not zero) - OS5PT2A.EXE/SBS5PT2A.EXE andWSOCK4F.EXE or WSOCK4G.EXE must be applied before applying TS524O.EXE. All but the last three of these files are available from http://support.novell.com/filefinder, the others are available by clicking on the links above.
Use
IDEATA.HAM 2.x for 4.1x/4.2, but you MUST install NWPAUP1A first. Do NOT use IDEATA v3.0 or later on NW4.x.
The
following web page contains a special edition of the IDEATA.HAM driver for old
NetWare versions:
http://www.huweb.hu/maques/nwudma.htm
It may not
have >128GB support, but it should be faster in any case.
Do NOT try to use TIMESYNC.NLM v5.x,
they aren’t for NW4.x. Apply NW4sp6a or later.
If you still have problems (or even
if you don't) and have access to an NTP server via your LAN (either on your
LAN/WAN or on the Internet), you should look into SNTPCLNT.NLM. It keeps the
clocks on the servers I've installed it on stable and synchronized to an NTP
source.
I gave up on the NTP support in
TIMESYNC.NLM more than a year ago. You should still use TIMESYNC.NLM for
synchronization within your network, but SNTPCLNT.NLM is much better for
synchronization to an NTP source.
You can download SNTPCLNT.NLM from http://www.neatech.ch/sntpclnt/index.html
It's simple, reliable, stable,
cheap, and you can try it before you buy it. I have no affiliation with this
software, I just find it to be very effective.
It never changes the time directly
on NW 4.x or later, but speeds up or slows down the clock to correct it so it
doesn't cause any synthetic time issues with NDS. It works with NW3/NW4/NW5. It
keeps the clocks on the servers I've installed it on to within 2 seconds per
week with once per day NTP synchronization.
IMHO, Novell should license this
software and include it with NW and just drop the NTP support in TIMESYNC.NLM.
I have had some problems with DNS
name->IP address resolution on NW4.x servers, so I place IP addresses in the
SNTPCLNT.CFG file rather than names, or at least place one server by it’s IP
address as the last server in the list, which guarantees it should be able to
contact that server even if DNS resolution fails. Names work correctly on NW5
servers as long as the DNS Resolver is properly configured in INETCFG ->
Protocols -> TCPIP. Placing the IP address of one server in the list is
still a good idea even with NW5.
After you’ve run it for a few hours,
I suggest you change the default synchronization interval from it's default of
every 5 minutes (ResyncIntervall = 300 seconds) to once per day (ResyncAT =
hh:mm:ss), especially if you're using a publicly accessible time server (it's
impolite to put too much load on a publicly accessible time server).
Furthermore, using too short a synchronization interval tends to make the timer
adjustments inaccurate, resulting in the clock being LESS stable. Recalculating
the timer adjustment more than once per day seems to be troublesome (at least
in the current version 1.6)
I also suggest you change the
following parameters:
MinTickRateCorrTime = 1.5
NTPSamples = 2
ResyncIntervall = 10800 ;in seconds
= 3 hours. This is the minimum I would recommend and then only if you’re using
your own private NTP server. For intervals greater than 32767 (about 9 hours),
use the ResyncAT=hh:mm:ss option instead of ResyncIntervall
ServerRetryCount = 3
UseFirstAnswer = 1 ;assumes all NTP servers in your list are
stable time sources. This uses the time
from the first NTP server in the list that replies. If you can’t be sure that the time retrieved from a server is
valid, remove that server from the list or leave this disabled.
MinimumHWCorrection = 2
Since SNTPCLNT defaults to synchronizing
the HW RTC clock, you should either disable HW clock synchronization in
SNTPCLNT.NLM or SET TIMESYNC HARDWARE CLOCK = OFF
There are other settings specific to
NW3 in the SNTPCLNT.CFG file, please examine the .CFG file and/or the
SNTPCLNT.PDF documentation included with SNTPCLNT
For test purposes, you may use my
NTP server (gw.otcnetworks.com), however this is on a low bandwidth connection
so please do not use it for more than testing. There are lists of publicly
accessible NTP servers on the internet at locations such as http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html