I wanted to share a write-up from a guy that is great and much smarter than me. He has quite a few guides that I have used to build up my system but this one has been the coolest in a sense. Most people probably don’t really think about it but most of our devices need to know what time it is. This brings us to NTP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol ). Now this is provided quite easily to us in the background by many public servers, pools, and our ISPs. Why is this a concern? Google it yourself and find out. For me the significant points are:
- I run 20-30 different servers, PCs, and SBCs at any given time and many do not have a direct connection to the internet for security reasons,
- Many of my systems interact with eachother, such as my ProxMox cluster with CephFS so accurate timekeeping is necessary for system stability,
- I just love tinkering with gadgets, gizmos, and projects – especially those that support other gadgets, gizmos, and projects.
So, if you are interested and want to give it a go, check out this page for a pretty good and simple walk-through to build your own NTP server.
https://nguvu.org/pfsense/network%20time%20protocol%20(ntp)/ntp-server/
Now for a few caveats:
- I run this on an older version of DietPi (v6.14 install) which likes to auto-update. Mine is currently running on 6.25.3 so I cannot guarantee it will work on anything newer.
- I did have the POE PiHat but it no longer works. Great idea if you have POE but YMMV.
- I purchased a RTC Shield (real-time clock) for the Odroid-C2 only to find out that not only are the pins no longer exposed so I can use it, using it requires you to disable any NTP service for it to work.
