[chrony-users] chrony startup marks all sources as falseticker

[Alan Young <consult.awy@xxxxxxxxx>]

    Hi,
    
    I asked
      this on serverfault but that does not seem to have been a good
    choice.

I start chronyd (3.4) with 4 initial servers, 2 remote (from a pool) and 2 local hosts on the same subnet, for example:

initstepslew 1 0.xxx.pool.ntp.org 1.xxx.pool.ntp.org 192.168.63.114 192.168.63.121
makestep 1 3

It may be that the system is not connected to the internet so that synchronizing to other local hosts is acceptable. It is however (also) possible that the other local devices rebooted pretty-much simultaneously and so they may also be trying to get their initial time sync at the same time.

Sometimes the result can be that all 4 servers are marked as falsetickers and the startup never completes (does not fork into background), leaving the system time at 01 January 1970.

MS Name/IP address         Stratum Poll Reach LastRx Last sample               
===============================================================================
^x 199.182.221.110               2   6     0   18h  -18717d[-18717d] +/-   60ms
^x 206.75.147.25                 2   6     0   18h  -18717d[-18717d] +/-   66ms
^x 192.168.63.114                4   6     0   18h  -18717d[-18717d] +/- 1115us
^x 192.168.63.121                4   6     0   18h  -18717d[-18717d] +/- 2394us

Any idea what is going on here and anything I can do to avoid and/or correct the situation?

Alan.