Network Time Protocol (NTP) is “a protocol for synchronizing the clocks of computer systems.”ยน You can read more about it at www.ntp.org.
To start with, we should first apt-get the required packages:
apt-get install ntp ntpdate
Basically this is it. Your server will pick a different set of four servers from a pool of NTP servers every time it starts up. If you have (low) resources, please do consider to join the pool.
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Since my server resides in an academic network with own NTP servers I’ve changed the default settings and replaced the pool of servers with a set of two servers from our network.
server ntp1.my_network.org server ntp2.my_network.org
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For more setting options and in depth coverage check:
Quick HOWTO: The NTP Server
Accurate Global Time Synchronization