NTP

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Installing and Configuring Chrony with Ansible on Rocky 8

If you are using Ansible to configure chrony which is a versatile implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP), you may want to take a look at the simple script below

- hosts: all
  tasks:

  - name: Install Chrony package
    dnf:
        name: chrony
        state: present
    when: ansible_distribution == "Rocky"

  - name: Configure Chrony servers
    lineinfile:
        path: /etc/chrony.conf
        line: "server sg.pool.ntp.org iburst"
        insertafter: '^#.*server 3.centos.pool.ntp.org iburst'
        state: present
    when: ansible_distribution == "Rocky"

  - name: Enable Chrony service
    service:
        name: chronyd
        state: started
        enabled: yes
    when: ansible_distribution == "Rocky"
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Basic Installing and Configuring NTP with Ansible

I have been learning from this book Fabio Alessandro Locati, published under Packt>.

There is one simple exercise where there is an example of “Ensuring that NTP is installed, configured and running”. The codes can be found at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learning-Ansible-2.X-Third-Edition/tree/master/Chapter02

--- 
- hosts: all 
  remote_user: ansible
  tasks: 
    - name: Ensure NTP is installed 
      yum: 
        name: ntp 
        state: present 
      become: True 
    - name: Ensure the timezone is set to UTC 
      file: 
        src: /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT 
        dest: /etc/localtime 
        state: link 
      become: True 
    - name: Ensure the NTP service is running and enabled 
      service: 
        name: ntpd 
        state: started 
        enabled: True 
      become: True
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Setting up NTP Client in Rocky Linux 8.5

Prerequisites Step 1: Endure you are in the correct time zone

# timedatectl
               Local time: Wed 2022-04-20 10:04:44 +08
           Universal time: Wed 2022-04-20 02:04:44 UTC
                 RTC time: Wed 2022-04-20 02:04:44
                Time zone: Asia/Singapore (+08, +0800)
System clock synchronized: no
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

Prerequisites Step 2: List Time Zone

# timedatectl list-timezones
.....
Asia/Singapore
.....

Prerequisites Step 3: Set Time Zone

# timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Singapore

In Rocky Linux 8.5, the ntp package is no longer supported and it is implemented by the chronyd (a daemon that runs in user-space) which is provided in the chrony package.

chrony works both as an NTP server and as an NTP client, which is used to synchronize the system clock with NTP servers.

To install the chrony suite, use the DNF Package Manager.

# dnf install chrony

Enable the Service

# systemctl start chronyd
# systemctl status chronyd
# systemctl enable chronyd

Check it is synchronised 

[root@h00 etc]# timedatectl
               Local time: Wed 2022-04-20 10:19:56 +08
           Universal time: Wed 2022-04-20 02:19:56 UTC
                 RTC time: Wed 2022-04-20 02:19:56
                Time zone: Asia/Singapore (+08, +0800)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

Setting up NTP Client Using Chrony in Rocky Linux 8.5

# vim /etc/chrony.conf
.....
pool sg.pool.ntp.org iburst
.....
# systemctl restart chronyd

Show the current time sources that chronyd is accessing

# chronyc sources
MS Name/IP address         Stratum Poll Reach LastRx Last sample
===============================================================================
^? 178.128.223.142               0   6     0     -     +0ns[   +0ns] +/-    0ns
.....
.....
.....

References: