NTP and IRIX

[Vernon Schryver]

In article <SCP.90Dec10100929 at grizzly.acl.lanl.gov>, scp at acl.lanl.gov (Stephen C. Pope) writes:
>...
> 	(BTW: looking in /usr/sysgen, it appears that the ``fastclock''
> is off, but without adb, who can tell?!?)

Anyone with dbx and the root password.  Sorry--couldn't resist.

Try `dbx -k /unix /dev/kmem` followed by "p <your favorite variable>".  You
can use assignements to change things, including code.  (I've done it.) 
I don't think dbx has the primitive assembler found in the ddt-->adb linage,
but then RISC code is easy to assembler, particularly if you use
"<addr>/50i" to find examples.  You can even use line numbers in the <addr>
by putting a "#" either before or after the number (I forget).

I'd guess that running with the 1000Hz clock will cause you NTP grief on
slower IRIS's.  1 msec is not much time to be absolutely, positively sure
you handle all interrupts every time, so that you don't miss a clock
interrupt.



I don't remember what tickadj did in 4.3BSD, but I doubt you're going to
find something sufficiently similar in IRIX to be of interest.  The IRIS
adjtime() code in os/clock.c is different and better, IMInsufficentlyHO.

Someday, in some future release, I hope to see an NTP implementation.  It
is not in 3.3.2.  It may not be in the following releases.  It may be based
on someone's existing code, or it may be based on the Postscript  (After
all, Dave Mills has written that the RFC is as good as an implementation.)
One requirement for a product is support for multicasting and elections
analogous to timed, since the vast majority of those who buy IRIS's do not
want to set up yet another configuration file.  I am interested in strong
opinions on ntpd and xntpd.

Until and unless an NTP implementation appears in IRIX near you, and if you
are more interested in keeping time than in fiddling with it (I'm more
interested in the fiddling), you should use timeslave to synchronize one
IRIS to an NTP or other good clock and use -F or -G to build a hierarchy of
timed-synchronized IRIS's.


Vernon Schryver,   vjs at sgi.com