Ubuntu 22.04 NTP server

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NTP stands for Network Time Protocol and is used for clock synchronization across multiple computers. An NTP server is responsible for keeping a set of computers in sync with each other. On a local network, the server should be able to keep all client systems to within a single millisecond of each other.

Such a configuration would be necessary if, for example, the systems needed to start or stop a task in unison at a precise time. In this article, we’ll show you how to configure an NTP server on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish and how to configure a client system to sync its system time with said server.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to install and configure NTP server
  • How to connect to an NTP server from a client machine
Ubuntu 22.04 NTP server
Ubuntu 22.04 NTP server
Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
Software NTP server daemon
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Install NTP server


To begin, we need to install NTP server. You can do so by opening a command line terminal and entering the following command:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install ntp

Configure NTP server

The NTP server comes pre-configured with some server pools already, which you can see inside the /etc/ntp.conf file.

$ cat /etc/ntp.conf
The default server pools inside our NTP config file
The default server pools inside our NTP config file

Generally, it’s best to replace these lines with server pools from your own country, or at least your own continent. The less latency between you and a time server, the better. You can use the NTP Pool Project website to find the closest NTP server pool to your location.

Find your closest server pools from the NTP Pool Project website
Find your closest server pools from the NTP Pool Project website

Once you find the most relevant zone, all you need to do is add the lines in your config file by using nano or your preferred text editor:

$ sudo nano /etc/ntp.conf
Enter the servers into the NTP config file
Enter the servers into the NTP config file

Once you’ve made these changes, save and exit the configuration file. Restart the NTP service for the changes to take effect:

$ sudo systemctl restart ntp


Check on the status of the NTP service at any time with this command:

$ sudo systemctl status ntp
The status of NTP server daemon
The status of NTP server daemon

Clients trying to connect to your NTP server will be doing so on UDP port 123. If you have the UFW firewall enabled on you system, be sure to configure it to allow these incoming connection requests:

$ sudo ufw allow from any to any port 123 proto udp
Rules updated
Rules updated (v6)

NTP client configuration

Now that we have an NTP server up and running, we will show how client systems can connect to it for time synchronization. Just follow the steps below on your client systems:

  1. First, we need to install the ntpdate package. We can use this to verify connectivity between the client and the NTP time server we created. 
    $ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install ntpdate
  2. Next, let’s attempt to mantually sync our system time with the NTP server. Type the following command, substituting your NTP server’s IP address or hostname where appropriate: 
    $ sudo ntpdate 192.168.100.4
    Connection to NTP server is successful
    Connection to NTP server is successful
  3. That seems to be working as we’d expect. Next, be sure to disable Ubuntu’s default timesyncd service, as this will conflict with our attempts to synchronize with the NTP server.

    $ sudo timedatectl set-ntp off
  4. Now, we need to install the NTP daemon on our client system so we can configure it to pull the time from our NTP server that we set up earlier. 
    $ sudo apt install ntp
  5. We only need to add a single line to our ntp.conf file, and we can do that very easily with a single command. Just make sure to replace the IP address below with either the hostname or the IP address of your NTP server. 
    $ sudo bash -c "echo server 192.168.100.4 prefer iburst >> /etc/ntp.conf"
  6. Then, restart the NTP daemon: 
    $ sudo systemctl restart ntp
  7. Lastly, use the ntpq command to list the NTP time synchronization queue: 
    $ ntpq -p
    Output from the ntpq command
    Output from the ntpq command

    The asterisk * in the screenshot above indicates that our NTP server 192.168.100.4 is selected as the current time synchronization source. This should remain the case unless the NTP server goes offline, as that’s how we’ve configured it inside the ntp.conf configuration file.

Read the below appendix for more information on how to interpret the ntpq command’s output.

Appendix

NTPQ Command column output interpretation:

  • remote – The remote server you wish to synchronize your clock with
  • refid – The upstream stratum to the remote server. For stratum 1 servers, this will be the stratum 0 source.
  • st – The stratum level, 0 through 16.
  • t – The type of connection. Can be “u” for unicast or manycast, “b” for broadcast or multicast, “l” for local reference clock, “s” for symmetric peer, “A” for a manycast server, “B” for a broadcast server, or “M” for a multicast server
  • when – The last time when the server was queried for the time. Default is seconds, or “m” will be displayed for minutes, “h” for hours and “d” for days.
  • poll – How often the server is queried for the time, with a minimum of 16 seconds to a maximum of 36 hours. It’s also displayed as a value from a power of two. Typically, it’s between 64 seconds and 1024 seconds.
  • reach – This is an 8-bit left shift octal value that shows the success and failure rate of communicating with the remote server. Success means the bit is set, failure means the bit is not set. 377 is the highest value.
  • delay – This value is displayed in milliseconds, and shows the round trip time (RTT) of your computer communicating with the remote server.
  • offset – This value is displayed in milliseconds, using root mean squares, and shows how far off your clock is from the reported time the server gave you. It can be positive or negative.
  • jitter – This number is an absolute value in milliseconds, showing the root mean squared deviation of your offsets.

NTPQ Command row output interpretation:

  • ” “ Discarded as not valid. Could be that you cannot communicate with the remote machine (it’s not online), this time source is a “.LOCL.” refid time source, it’s a high stratum server, or the remote server is using this computer as an NTP server.
  • x Discarded by the intersection algorithm.
  • . Discarded by table overflow (not used).
  • – Discarded by the cluster algorithm.
  • + Included in the combine algorithm. This is a good candidate if the current server we are synchronizing with is discarded for any reason.
  • # Good remote server to be used as an alternative backup. This is only shown if you have more than 10 remote servers.
  • * The current system peer. The computer is using this remote server as its time source to synchronize the clock
  • o Pulse per second (PPS) peer. This is generally used with GPS time sources, although any time source delivering a PPS will do. This tally code and the previous tally code “*” will not be displayed simultaneously.

Ref: Ref: https://pthree.org/2013/11/05/real-life-ntp/

Closing Thoughts


In this tutorial, we learned about the National Time Protocol (NTP) and how to setup our own NTP server on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. We also saw how to configure a client machine (or multiple machines, as is usually the case) to connect to the NTP server for time synchronization.

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