Linux server users might have noticed that after adjusting the system clock to the correct time, server loses the correct time within a while. Keeping your system’s time up to date is important, especially when you have time critical cron tabs to execute or you are required to examine the logs from a particular time of the day. That's when the network time protocol (NTP) comes into the picture. In this article we will explain the steps to setup an NTP server on your machine to adjust your machine's clock regularly.

Network time protocol (NTP) enables you to synchronize your server’s system time with a remote server periodically. Thus, you can keep your system time accurate by syncing with known time servers.

For Ubuntu/Debian

 sudo aptitude update
 sudo aptitude install ntp

Set NTP service to run at boot time

Once NTP server is installed ensure that service will run at boot time by running.

sudo /sbin/chkconfig ntpd on

Start the NTP service

To make sure the NTP service starts after installing issue following command.

sudo /etc/init.d/ntp start 

By installing the NTP service your server is automatically setup to sync time with default NTP servers.

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