If the clock is way off, you need to do this manual step because otherwise ntp will not change your clock and will not tell you why.# apt-get install fake-hwclock fake-hwclock: Save/restore system clock on machines without working RTC hardware Some machines don't have a working realtime clock (RTC) unit, or no driver for the hardware that does exist.

fake-hwclock is a simple set of scripts to save the kernel's current clock periodically (including at shutdown) and restore it at boot so that the system clock keeps at least close to realtime.

But you should usually specify the country you want the servers to be from by using the country code in the hostnames. If "ntpdate" does not work, it means that something is blocking NTP packets.

For India it would be: It doesnt work still[Thu May 17 [email protected]:bin]$./ntpq -pn remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================‌​======== 2.67 . If "ntpdate" works, but "ntpd" isn't (as the current situation in the question), it means that there's something else in your configuration breaking things.

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Consider that the the '-B' flag it mentions that offsets over 128 ms can take hours to sync using the default 'slew' mechanism The "-q" option tells the NTP daemon to start up, set the time and immediately exit.

The "-g" option allows it to correct for time differences larger then 1000 sec.

Click Here to receive this Complete Guide absolutely free.From ntpdate's man page: "Force the time to be stepped using the settimeofday() system call, rather than slewed (default) using the adjtime() system call.This option should be used when called from a startup file at boot time." Many of the answers below do not include it, and that maybe part of the problem in getting things to work.Yes, the kernel will start with the hardware clock on boot since on boot that is it's only reference.If it's been running for many months, as you say, then that isn't it. I'm not sure about Ubuntu but on Red Hat based systems that's in /etc/sysconfig/ntpd.You can look there or refer to your hardware's documentation.I also don't think you understand that ntpdate is a standalone application.It doesn't have anything to do with ntpd and shouldn't be used to troubleshoot it. After you use ntpdate to set the clock, use 'hwclock --systohc' to sync "running" time to your hardware clock.The reason that ntpq was suggested with the -p options to show peering. It is supposed to sync on a reboot but if your machine crashes (or otherwise had a problem doing a proper shutdown) it could not sync it.It may be that the service/s you're trying to reach are firewalled, or the daemons may not be running on the remote machine.Ping (and traceroute) are simply there to debug IP-level connectivity: they do nothing to test transport-level (TCP, UDP) service availability / reachability.I have verified that port 123 is open via "nc -uvz INTERNALSERVER1 123".Below are a few strange things I have noticed on the servers that are not updating time correctly: # ntpq -c readlist ass ID=0 status=c011 sync_alarm, sync_unspec, 1 event, event_restart, version="ntpd [email protected] Fri Dec 19 UTC 2014 (1)", processor="x86_64", system="Linux/2.6.18-238.9.1.el5", leap=11, stratum=16, precision=-20, rootdelay=0.000, rootdispersion=150.435, peer=0, refid=INIT, reftime=00000000.00000000 Thu, Feb 7 2036 .000, poll=6, clock=d8f38d56.a53e9da7 Tue, May 5 2015 .645, state=1, offset=0.000, frequency=0.000, jitter=0.001, noise=0.001, stability=0.000, tai=0# Permit time synchronization with our time source, but do not # permit the source to query or modify the service on this system.Hello, A few months ago we switched the NTP servers that our Linux servers use to point to a couple of windows servers that the rest of the company uses.Since that time we have been having issues with time staying synced up on some of these servers. The strange thing is I can do a ntpd -gq to force an update and it works.