[Elecraft] Mac Clock Question

Stephen Prior eastbrantwood at gmail.com
Tue Feb 20 13:50:40 EST 2018 

My 2012 Mac mini running 10.13.3 keeps within a few tens of milliseconds
every time I check.   It uses Apple's own time servers, in my case
time.euro.apple.com

Works for me,

73 Stephen G4SJP



On 20 February 2018 at 18:42, Walter Underwood <wunder at wunderwood.org>
wrote:

> With a terminal window open, run “ntpq -p” to get a list of current NTP
> peers and the offset in milliseconds.
>
> $ ntpq -p
>      remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset
> jitter
> ============================================================
> ==================
> +10.74.16.53     129.6.15.28      2 u  522 1024  377   25.148   -0.522
>  3.996
> *10.74.16.54     128.138.141.172  2 u  794 1024  377   23.834   -2.152
>  0.769
>
> Almost exactly 25 years ago, I wrote a more complicated NTP info script.
> At the time “groper” implied that it was groping around in the dark. Times
> have changed.
>
> https://opensource.apple.com/source/ntp/ntp-92.30.1/
> scripts/ntp-groper.auto.html
>
> wunder
> K6WRU
> Walter Underwood
> CM87wj
> http://observer.wunderwood.org/ (my blog)
>
> > On Feb 20, 2018, at 10:23 AM, Detrick Merz <detrick at merzhaus.org> wrote:
> >
> > Unfortunately, with some recently releases of OSX, Apple decided to tweak
> > the NTP daemon to "save battery power." This results in the clock
> drifting
> > significantly from our perspective, but "not enough for the average user
> to
> > care about." It can definitely be enough for JT modes to care about. I
> > tracked my clock accuracy at one point on OSX 10.9 (I think), and as I
> > recall I saw it drift up to 20 seconds at some points in time.
> >
> > I'm unsure if it's been improved in the most recent macOS releases, but
> the
> > idea of forcing a restart of NTP either daily, or whenever you fire up
> > WSJT-X, hasn't necessarily been as much of a faux pas as one might think.
> >
> > -detrick
> > K4IZ
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 12:49 PM, Dale Chayes <dale at ldeo.columbia.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>> On Feb 20, 2018, at 12:06 , Walter Underwood <wunder at wunderwood.org>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Should not need to unlock and relock daily. In fact, that could hurt
> >> time synchronization.
> >>
> >> Indeed, restarting runs the risk of loosing  (over-writing) the
> >> calibration (local clock drift rate) that NTP uses to keep the local
> clock
> >> accurate.
> >>
> >> From my experience, I would put the idea of “restart every day” in the
> >> same category as old guidance about primitive operating systems that
> some
> >> folks used to recommend re-booting every day in order to prevent
> crashes.
> >>
> >>> Mac OS runs NTP, which continually adjusts the time.
> >>
> >> I _think_ every modern OS uses an NTP implementation or at least has one
> >> available.
> >>
> >> Some light:
> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol <
> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol>
> >> and not so light:
> >> http://www.ntp.org/ <http://www.ntp.org/>
> >> https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/papers.html <
> >> https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/papers.html>
> >> reading for those who don’t know about NTP.
> >>
> >>
> >> I’d be interested to hear about ones that:
> >> a) don’t have an NTP implementation available and/or
> >> b) have one that does not work reliably
> >>
> >> One issue I’d keep an eye on is whether your OS (and it’s NTP daemon)
> will
> >> tell you if it’s having trouble syncing.
> >>
> >> With a good NTP implementation, you could go months (or years) with no
> >> significant time of day error and then loose your time sync and slowly
> >> drift off to the point that it matters for your application.
> >>
> >> You can also run into this problem if you are off the ‘net and the NTP
> >> daemon can’t get to the NTP source often enough.
> >>
> >> -Dale
> >>
> >>>
> >>> wunder
> >>> K6WRU
> >>> Walter Underwood
> >>> CM87wj
> >>> http://observer.wunderwood.org/ (my blog)
> >>>
> >>>> On Feb 20, 2018, at 8:55 AM, John Stengrevics <
> jstengrevics at comcast.net>
> >> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Richard,
> >>>>
> >>>> I run a Mac here.  Go to System Preferences, Unlock, enter “
> >> us.pool.ntp.org <http://us.pool.ntp.org/>”, Lock and you will be good
> to
> >> go.
> >>>>
> >>>> You should Unlock, delete, and renter the above daily to make sure you
> >> are synched - takes 30 seconds.
> >>>>
> >>>> John
> >>>> WA1EAZ
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Feb 20, 2018, at 11:49 AM, Richard <FlatHat at comcast.net> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Before I get into the list of problems I’m having using WSJT-X FT8 on
> >> my K3S, I’d like to know:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 1. Is the automatic clock setting in my Mac mini (running Sierra,
> >> 10.12) good enough for modes like JT65 and FT8?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 2. If not, what’s a good reliable time sync app I can download and
> use?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Cheers!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Richard Kunc — W4KBX
> >>>>>
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