Ntpdate configuration

ntpdate configuration

Sometimes we can get following message when we try to start ntpd service

ntpd: Synchronizing with time server:            [FAILED]
Starting ntpd:                                   [  OK  ]

The messages come even when we comment all default servers in '/etc/ntp.conf' and configure only one local time server. To solve the problem we can edit file '/etc/ntp/step-tickers' and write FQDN or IP address of time server in that file. After that if we restart ntpd then everything works fine. This is generally required in older versions of ntpd/ntpdate. Newer versions seem to work fine without this extra step.