[mythtv-users] Can't solve a problem with Skipping/Fast Forwarding

[Stephen Robertson]

On 8/16/06, chris at cpr.homelinux.net <chris at cpr.homelinux.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 08:30:36AM +0100, Stephen Robertson wrote:
> > I think I have checked NTP but to be honest I've not found out how to
> > conclusively check that it is working.
>
> First of all, are you running ntpd (the full ntp client/server
> daemon) or ntpdate (the one-shot time correction tool)?
>
> The ntpdate package is usually installed to run only once at system
> boot.  If you want to use it to keep your system up to date then
> you'll need to have a cron job that runs ntpdate every hour or so.
>
> If you have both ntpdate and ntpd installed then ntpdate won't do
> anything (it detects ntpd is running and exits without making
> changes).
>
> The ntpd daemon normally logs to the syslog facility, which means
> that its output can be tossed if syslog thinks the messages are
> unimportant.  You can specify a log file in /etc/ntp.conf and the
> daemon will tell you what it's doing.

I'm running ntpd.  It is currently logging to syslog so I will try
changing the logfile.
I can't check the frontend from work as it is not switched on but the
only message in the ntp log file after changing it to /var/log.ntpd
and restarting ntpd is :

16 Aug 15:27:36 ntpd[22770]: frequency initialized -175.287 PPM from
/var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift

Whether that means it's all working correctly I'm not sure.
>
> > I have configured my DHCP server to provide the details of an NTP
> > server and from my reading of the minimyth documentation it should
> > bomb out with an error if there is a problem with it.
>
> What should bomb out?  The DHCP server?  The DHCP client?  The
> ntpd/ntpdate program?  Myth?

The bit about bombing out is from my reading of the minimyth.conf:
#MiniMyth expects the DHCP server to provide the NTP time server address(es).
# If the DHCP server does not provide the NTP time server address(es), then
# during initialization MiniMyth will output an error message and abort. If you
# are using the ISC DHCP server then the dhcpd.conf file option for setting
# the NTP time server address(es) is 'ntp-servers'.  I don't see any
error messages, assuming I'm looking in all the right places of
course.  But it certainly isn't any where obvious!


> Are you sure that the DHCP client on your myth box is even capable
> of reading the ntp information from the lease?  You could (and
> probably should) consider bypassing any DHCP and local ntp server
> issues by specifying a time server in the ntp config file and
> allowing it to reach out to a known-good server on the internet.
> You can worry about peering to your local network later once you've
> got a client that is known to be working.

I've tried specifying my server as the ntpserver in the dhcp.conf file
and also specifying a known good server on the internet, with no
apparent difference in result.  I'll read some more on minimyth to see
if it is possible to have it just go straight to an internet based
server.

The thing I'm not even sure of is would a problem with ntp be likely
to result in the problems I'm seeing?

Thanks to everyone for their help, it is appreciated.

Stephen