NTP or time sync between Director and Sensors

[sboutchyard]

Has anyone successfully implemented NTP on the sensors getting their time from the Unix Director?

[clindsey]

Several releases back I had looked into this, and what I concluded was that you could *manually* have the sensor hit an NTP server to get the time (the same place you would enter the time manually in the setup process), however the setting did not appear to continually hit the NTP server to maintain the time. You would have to go in periodically and force that.

There may be a way at the OS level to accomplish this, however, and I have not looked into that aspect. I would like to hear others' experiences with the same.

[wardwalk]

Not sure if this helps, but you can synchronize sensor time with another machine, e.g. the director.

Run sysconfig-sensor, selection option 7 (Date/Time and TimeZone). Then select option 1 (Synchronize Date/Time with Another Host). Then, enter the IP address of your director.

[sboutchyard]

Yes, I have used this in the past. I would like to use NTP at the OS level to continuouly poll the time server. Has anyone made this work?

[wardwalk]

This feature has been requested by several users. As a result, the Solaris NTP package is installed on the latest version appliance sensors. Some users have indeed implemented NTP on their sensors as you described. So it is possible.

However, we don't yet support configuring or using it and the TAC won't field calls for it's support. So, it's a use at your own risk feature.

Support for configuring NTP is being considered for a future version.

If using the IDSM in the Cat6000, then NTP can be configured directly on the Cat6000 and the time changes will be propagated to the IDSM.

[brok3n]

I would be careful adding additional listeners to the sensors. SSH is enough for me, the fewer attack vectors the better.

ntpdate and crontab seems to work ok for me.

-brkn!

[waynepua]

I have tried run ntp daemon on solaris director machine pointing to a ntp server. Then on the sensor, sychronise the time with director and it works.

[sboutchyard]

Do you have any documentation or SOP you could share. I am getting mixed results with some of the sensors not getting updated. Thanks