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chronyd(8) - Linux man page

Name
chronyd - chrony background daemon

Synopsis
chronyd [OPTIONS]

Description
chrony is a pair of programs for maintaining the accuracy of computer clocks.
chronyd is a background daemon program that can be started at boot time.

chronyd is a daemon which runs in background on the system. It obtains

measurements (e.g. via the network) of the system's offset relative to other systems,
and adjusts the system time accordingly. For isolated systems, the user can
periodically enter the correct time by hand (using chronyc). In either case, chronyd
determines the rate at which the computer gains or loses time, and compensates for
this.

Usage
chronyd is usually started at boot-time and requires superuser priviliges.

If chronyd has been installed to its default location /usr/local/sbin/chronyd, starting

it is simply a matter of entering the command:

/usr/local/sbin/chronyd

Information messages and warnings will be logged to syslog.

Options
A summary of the options supported by chronyd is included below.

-P priority
This option will select the SCHED_FIFO real-time scheduler at the specified
priority (which must be between 0 and 100). This mode is supported only on
Linux.
-m
This option will lock chronyd into RAM so that it will never be paged out. This
mode is only supported on Linux.
-n
When run in this mode, the program will not detach itself from the terminal.
-d
When run in this mode, the program will not detach itself from the terminal, and
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all messages will be sent to the terminal instead of to syslog.

-f conf-file
This option can be used to specify an alternate location for the configuration file
(default /etc/chrony.conf).
-r
This option will reload sample histories for each of the servers being used. These
histories are created by using the dump command in chronyc, or by setting the
dumponexit directive in the configuration file. This option is useful if you want to
stop and restart chronyd briefly for any reason, e.g. to install a new version.
However, it only makes sense on systems where the kernel can maintain clock
compensation whilst not under chronyd's control. The only version where this
happens so far is Linux. On systems where this is not the case, e.g. Solaris and
SunOS the option should not be used.
-s
This option will set the system clock from the computer's real-time clock. This is
analogous to supplying the -s flag to the /sbin/clock program during the Linux
boot sequence.

Support for real-time clocks is limited at present - the criteria are described in
the section on the rtcfile directive in the documentation supplied with the
distribution.

If chronyd cannot support the real time clock on your computer, this option
cannot be used and a warning message will be logged to the syslog.

If used in conjunction with the -r flag, chronyd will attempt to preserve the old
samples after setting the system clock from the real time clock. This can be used
to allow chronyd to perform long term averaging of the gain or loss rate across
system reboots, and is useful for dial-up systems that are shut down when not in
use. For this to work well, it relies on chronyd having been able to determine
accurate statistics for the difference between the real time clock and system
clock last time the computer was on.

-u user
When this option is used, chronyd will drop root privileges to the specified user.
So far, it works only on Linux when compiled with capabilities support.
-v
This option displays chronyd's version number to the terminal and exits
-4
Resolve hostnames only to IPv4 addresses.
-6
Resolve hostnames only to IPv6 addresses.

Files
/etc/chrony.conf
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Version
Version 1.25

Bugs
To report bugs, please visit http://chrony.tuxfamily.org/

See Also
chronyd is documented in detail in the documentation supplied with the distribution
(chrony.txt and chrony.texi) and is also available

from http://go.to/chrony

chrony(1), chronyc(1), chrony.conf(5), clock(8), xntpd(8), ntpd(8)

Author
Richard Curnow <rc@rc0.org.uk>

This man-page was written by Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org> as part

of "The Missing Man Pages Project". Please see http://www.netmeister.org/misc/m2p2
/index.html for details.

The complete chrony documentation is supplied in texinfo format.

Referenced By
chronyd_selinux(8)