FreeBSD 12 – Common Problem 007 – System Time Drifts Because ntpd Is Misconfigured

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

TLS, logs, and distributed jobs fail due to clock skew.

Environment & Reproduction

VM and bare-metal hosts show increasing offset over hours.

Root Cause Analysis

`ntpd` disabled, wrong servers in `/etc/ntp.conf`, or blocked UDP/123.

Quick Triage

Check time services and current offset.

service ntpd status
ntpq -pn
date -u

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Inspect peer reachability and startup options.

grep -v '^#' /etc/ntp.conf
sysrc ntpd_enable ntpd_sync_on_start
sockstat -4 -6 | grep ntpd

Solution – Primary Fix

Enable sync on boot and restart NTP daemon.

sysrc ntpd_enable='YES'
sysrc ntpd_sync_on_start='YES'
service ntpd restart

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Use `openntpd` consistently, but do not run both daemons simultaneously.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

`ntpq -pn` shows reachable peers and offset stabilizes below operational threshold.

Rollback Plan

Restore previous `ntp.conf`, restart old daemon, and re-check offsets.

Prevention & Hardening

Alert on drift and enforce NTP config in provisioning templates.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

`Clock skew detected`, certificate `not yet valid`, Kerberos auth errors.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for freebsd-12.

View all freebsd-12 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

`ntpd(8)`, `ntp.conf(5)`, FreeBSD time services docs.