ntpd includes a comprehensive monitoring facility suitable for continuous, long term recording of server and client timekeeping performance. See the statistics command below for a listing and example of each type of statistics currently supported. Statistic files are managed using file generation sets and scripts in the ./scripts directory of this distribution. Using these facilities and Unix cron jobs, the datacan be automatically summarized and archived for retrospective analysis.
Monitoring Commands
statistics name [...]
Enables writing of statistics records. Currently, six kinds of namestatistics are supported.
clockstats
Enables recording of clock driver statistics information. Each update received from a clock driver appends a line of the following form to the file generation set named clockstats:
49213 525.624 127.127.4.1 93 226 00:08:29.606 D
The first two fields show the date (Modified Julian Day) and time (seconds and fraction past UTC midnight). The next field shows the clock address in dotted-quad notation, The final field shows the last timecode received from the clock in decoded ASCII format, where meaningful. In some clock drivers a good deal of additional information can be gathered and displayed as well. See information specific to each clock for further details.
cryptostats
This option requires the OpenSSL cryptographic software library. It enables recording of cryptographic public key protocol information. Each message received by the protocol module appends a line of the following form to the file generation set named cryptostats:
49213 525.624 127.127.4.1 message
The first two fields show the date (Modified Julian Day) and time (seconds and fraction past UTC midnight). The next field shows the peer address in dotted-quad notation, The final message field includes the message type and certain ancillary information. See the Authentication Options page for further information.
loopstats
Enables recording of loop filter statistics information. Each update of the local clock outputs a line of the following form to the file generation set named loopstats:
The first two fields show the date (Modified Julian Day) and time (seconds and fraction past UTC midnight). The next five fields show time offset (seconds), frequency offset (parts per million - PPM), RMS jitter (seconds), Allan deviation (PPM) and clock discipline time constant.
peerstats
Enables recording of peer statistics information. This includes statistics records of all peers of a NTP server and of special signals, where present and configured. Each valid update appends a line of the following form to the current element of a file generation set named peerstats:
The first two fields show the date (Modified Julian Day) and time (seconds and fraction past UTC midnight). The next two fields show the peer address in dotted-quad notation and status, respectively. The status field is encoded in hex in the format described in Appendix B of the NTP specification RFC 1305. The final four fields show the offset, delay, dispersion and RMS jitter, all in seconds.
rawstats
Enables recording of raw-timestamp statistics information. This includes statistics records of all peers of a NTP server and of special signals, where present and configured. Each NTP message received from a peer or clock driver appends a line of the following form to the file generation set named rawstats:
The first two fields show the date (Modified Julian Day) and time (seconds and fraction past UTC midnight). The next two fields show the remote peer or clock address followed by the local address in dotted-quad notation, The final four fields show the originate, receive, transmit and final NTP timestamps in order. The timestamp values are as received and before processing by the various data smoothing and mitigation algorithms.
sysstats
Enables recording of ntpd statistics counters on a periodic basis. Each hour a line of the following form is appended to the file generation set named sysstats:
The first two fields show the date (Modified Julian Day) and time (seconds and fraction past UTC midnight). The remaining ten fields show the statistics counter values accumulated since the last generated line.
Time since restart 36000
Time in hours since the system was last rebooted.
Packets received 81965
Total number of packets received.
Packets processed 0
Number of packets received in response to previous packets sent
Current version 9546
Number of packets matching the current NTP version.
Previous version 56
Number of packets matching the previous NTP version.
Bad version 71793
Number of packets matching neither NTP version.
Access denied 512
Number of packets denied access for any reason.
Bad length or format 540
Number of packets with invalid length, format or port number.
Bad authentication 10
Number of packets not verified as authentic.
Rate exceeded 147
Number of packets discarded due to rate limitation.
statsdir directory_path
Indicates the full path of a directory where statistics files should be created (see below). This keyword allows the (otherwise constant) filegen filename prefix to be modified for file generation sets, which is useful for handling statistics logs.
Configures setting of generation file set name. Generation file sets provide a means for handling files that are continuously growing during the lifetime of a server. Server statistics are a typical example for such files. Generation file sets provide access to a set of files used to store the actual data. At any time at most one element of the set is being written to. The type given specifies when and how data will be directed to a new element of the set. This way, information stored in elements of a file set that are currently unused are available for administrational operations without the risk of disturbing the operation of ntpd. (Most important: they can be removed to free space for new data produced.)
Note that this command can be sent from the ntpdc program running at a remote location.
name
This is the type of the statistics records, as shown in the statistics command.
file filename
This is the file name for the statistics records. Filenames of set members are built from three concatenated elements prefix, filename and suffix:
prefix
This is a constant filename path. It is not subject to modifications via the filegen option. It is defined by the server, usually specified as a compile-time constant. It may, however, be configurable for individual file generation sets via other commands. For example, the prefix used with loopstats and peerstats generation can be configured using the statsdir option explained above.
filename
This string is directly concatenated to the prefix mentioned above (no intervening / (slash)). This can be modified using the file argument to the filegen statement. No .. elements are allowed in this component to prevent filenames referring to parts outside the filesystem hierarchy denoted by prefix.
suffix
This part is reflects individual elements of a file set. It is generated according to the type of a file set.
type typename
A file generation set is characterized by its type. The following types are supported:
none
The file set is actually a single plain file.
pid
One element of file set is used per incarnation of a ntpd server. This type does not perform any changes to file set members during runtime, however it provides an easy way of separating files belonging to different ntpd server incarnations. The set member filename is built by appending a . (dot) to concatenated prefix and filename strings, and appending the decimal representation of the process ID of the ntpd server process.
day
One file generation set element is created per day. A day is defined as the period between 00:00 and 24:00 UTC. The file set member suffix consists of a . (dot) and a day specification in the form YYYYMMdd. YYYY is a 4-digit year number (e.g., 1992). MM is a two digit month number. dd is a two digit day number. Thus, all information written at 10 December 1992 would end up in a file named prefix filename.19921210.
week
Any file set member contains data related to a certain week of a year. The term week is defined by computing day-of-year modulo 7. Elements of such a file generation set are distinguished by appending the following suffix to the file set filename base: A dot, a 4-digit year number, the letter W, and a 2-digit week number. For example, information from January, 10th 1992 would end up in a file with suffix .1992W1.
month
One generation file set element is generated per month. The file name suffix consists of a dot, a 4-digit year number, and a 2-digit month.
year
One generation file element is generated per year. The filename suffix consists of a dot and a 4 digit year number.
age
This type of file generation sets changes to a new element of the file set every 24 hours of server operation. The filename suffix consists of a dot, the letter a, and an 8-digit number. This number is taken to be the number of seconds the server is running at the start of the corresponding 24-hour period. Information is only written to a file generation by specifying enable; output is prevented by specifying disable.
link | nolink
It is convenient to be able to access the current element of a file generation set by a fixed name. This feature is enabled by specifying link and disabled using nolink. If link is specified, a hard link from the current file set element to a file without suffix is created. When there is already a file with this name and the number of links of this file is one, it is renamed appending a dot, the letter C, and the pid of the ntpd server process. When the number of links is greater than one, the file is unlinked. This allows the current file to be accessed by a constant name.
from Pogo, Walt Kelly