pfSense

The script /usr/local/sbin/ntpdate_sync_once.sh is looping until the initial synchro with ntpdate is sucessfull. Once the initial synchro is done, the script calls ntpd.

#!/bin/sh

NOTSYNCED="true" 
SERVER=`cat /cf/conf/config.xml | grep timeservers | cut -d">" -f2 | cut -d"<" -f1`

while [ "$NOTSYNCED" = "true" ]; do
        ntpdate $SERVER
        if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
                NOTSYNCED="false" 
        fi
        sleep 5
done

# Launch -- we have net.
killall ntpd 2>/dev/null
sleep 1
/usr/local/sbin/ntpd -s -f /var/etc/ntpd.conf

So in case of problem (dns config mispatch, wan failure, etc..), this script will never end.

A possible workaround: loop only a maximum of three times, and launch ntpd.

Chris, are you ok with this ?

If you have a WAN failure or don't have working DNS, then launching ntpd is just as useless because it uses the same time server.

This seems to be working correctly now as of edf99ce (See also 2db351a and 54c1859)

with the Fri Apr 8 18:33:38 EDT 2011 build the
issue seems to be gone.

Thank you

I updated this again with cd11a14

ntpdate sync is completely gone, since simply starting ntpd with -s will have the same effect. This makes that separate syncing step and script obsolete.

ntpd is always running now, either as a client to keep the clock in sync (which was the case before as well) or as a server for responding to local clients.