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This is an old revision of the document!

I remember looking at this circa 2016 - 2021 and letting go at that time, crony had just been released and systemd was still relatively new at that time.

systemd commands

sudo systemctl status systemd-timesyncd
- The default configuration is shown in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf (All the defaults are shown commented out)
- Copy the default configuration in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf to /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf.d/timesyncd.conf and modify options in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf.d/timesyncd.conf
timedatectl timesync-status

ntp servers

ntp servers can be checked using the ntpdate command, which can be loaded in Debian with sudo apt install ntpsec-ntpdate

List of local ntp servers

Ranked by testing with sudo ntpdate -q {ntp servername/ip}

sync	accuracy	server	ip address	stratum	leap status
+0.018040	+/- 0.026068	nets.org.sg	129.126.239.115	s1	no-leap
+0.020117	+/- 0.027653	3.au.pool.ntp.org	103.126.53.123	s2	no-leap
+0.020819	+/- 0.027315	0.au.pool.ntp.org	139.99.135.247	s2	no-leap
+0.050351	+/- 0.064718	1.au.pool.ntp.org	180.150.8.191	s1	no-leap
+2.023585	+/- 2.027176	2.au.pool.ntp.org	110.232.114.22	s2	no-leap

Taken 2025-11-09 09:40

sync	accuracy	server	ip address	stratum	leap status
+0.002717	+/- 0.027207	3.debian.pool.ntp.org	139.99.135.247	s2	no-leap
+0.003344	+/- 0.030205	0.debian.pool.ntp.org	150.107.75.115	s2	no-leap
+0.187739	+/- 0.208642	1.debian.pool.ntp.org	203.132.94.154	s1	no-leap
+2.001419	+/- 2.038669	2.debian.pool.ntp.org	159.196.3.239	s2	no-leap
+0.000044	+/- 0.024017	pool.ntp.org	129.250.35.250	s2	no-leap
+0.000092	+/- 0.024373	au.pool.ntp.org	112.213.32.219	s2	no-leap
+0.023537	+/- 0.064874	0.au.pool.ntp.org	159.196.3.239	s2	no-leap
+0.000697	+/- 0.021170	1.au.pool.ntp.org	67.219.100.202	s2	no-leap
+2.002964	+/- 2.027214	2.au.pool.ntp.org	112.213.32.219	s2	no-leap
+0.154351	+/- 0.184338	3.au.pool.ntp.org	159.196.40.161	s1	no-leap

Taken 2025-11-09 11:15

Based upon the duplication of ip address for different domain names and changing ip addresses on same domain names it looks like the ip address are rolled to different servers to balance load.

chronyc

chronyc can be used to query chronyd. The following are some key queries. Note chrony help will provide a list of available commands.

sources -v will list information about the current sources
tracking Display system time information
nptdata display information about last valid measurement
activity check how many NTP sources are online/offline
serverstats Display statistics of the server
authdata -v Display information about authentication

/etc/chrony/chrony.conf

# default config

pool pool.ntp.org iburst
initstepslew 10 pool.ntp.org
driftfile /var/lib/chrony/chrony.drift
rtcsync
cmdport 0

Reference

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