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I want to monitor the time drift on my workstation. How can I compare my local time to a timeserver like pool.ntp.org and show the difference?

Peter Hoffmann
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1 Answers1

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Old, Outdated Answer

If you run ntpdate -q pool.ntp.org, it will show you the difference between your time and the time server.

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ntpdate has been deprecated for quite some time, and as of this edit (2017) it may no longer be available on new distributions.

clockdiff _server_ will show the clock difference and has been available since 12.04 LTS. See the man page for clockdiff.

jwernerny
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  • This doesn't work on all Linux systems - I have an embedded computer running Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, kernel 2.6.21-ts for which ntpdate is a shell script that gives the following for the above command: Usage: /etc/init.d/ntpdate {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}. Any alternatives? – Roger Dueck Aug 15 '17 at 20:57
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    @RogerDueck According to the question ntpd vs nptdate - pros and cons, ntpdate has been deprecated for quite a while. The suggestion is to use ntpd instead. – jwernerny Aug 17 '17 at 15:32
  • My system doesn't have clockdiff either, and I don't see any way to make ntpd give the one-time clock difference that the deprecated ntpdate did. – Roger Dueck Aug 17 '17 at 16:52