How to configure an NTP client under Solaris

Published   Read time 58 sec(s)   (2696 views).  Solaris  

NTP is a protocol designed to synchronize the clocks of computers over data networks.

In a nutshell, any Solaris machine can be an NTP client or an NTP server. Roughly, an NTP client is a machine that uses the NTP protocol to synchronize its clock and an NTP server is a machine that provides NTP client the information needed to synchronize their clocks.

This blog post has been slightly updated to accommodate some minor modifications to support Solaris 11.

Solaris 10

To configure NTP Client on Solaris 10 execute the following steps:

  1. Copy NTP client configuration 
    # cp /etc/inet/ntp.client /etc/inet/ntp.conf
  2. Edit the config file: 
    # vi /etc/inet/ntp.conf
server NTPSERVER1
server NTPSERVER2

    replace NTPSERVER1 and NTPSERVER2 with the NTP servers on your network:

  3. Enable NTP service 
    # svcadm enable svc:/network/ntp:default

Solaris 11

To configure NTP Client on Solaris 11 execute the following steps:

  1. Copy NTP client configuration 
    # cp /etc/inet/ntp.client /etc/inet/ntp.conf
  2. Edit the configuration file 
    # vi /etc/inet/ntp.conf
server NTPSERVER1 iburst
server NTPSERVER2 iburst

    replace NTPSERVER1 and NTPSERVER2 with the NTP servers on your network:

  3. Enable NTP service 
    # svcadm enable svc:/network/ntp:default