ntpd.conf - google alternative

[victorvas]

ntpd reaches out to www.google.com for time synchronizing

What is a good website I can replace google with?

[TronDD]

It's not for time syncronizing exactly. A compliant webserver will send its time in a response to a request using a Date header (per RFC 7231). The time is merely used as a sanity check against the time returned by you configured timeservers which likely have no authenticity. (If they do, you can used 'trusted' instead. See ntpd.conf(5))

You can use any HTTPS server you trust to manage their private webserver keys and server time correctly.

[IdOp]

I suggest going to ntp.org and looking for their server lists and how to use them.

I use {0,1,2}.ca.pool.ntp.org but those are in Canada, you probably want something closer to your location.

[fvgit]

Interesting comment from Theo discussing ntpd.conf on misc@

[IdOp]

Thank you very much for linking that. It seems my suggestion was dated and not best practice.

[victorvas]

Originally Posted by fvgit

Interesting comment from Theo discussing ntpd.conf on misc@

Thank you for posting this link! I'm becoming more "paranoid", which is actually a good thing to happen.

[fvgit]

Well, to put things into perspective, I actually do remove the google constraint from the config myself and replace it with a few servers from German websites I trust. But Theo's reasoning is difficult to repudiate.

I'm still on the fence on this.

[IdOp]

In my case I don't use ntpd, I just run ntpdate once a day, and if it did anything crazy to the time I would be very likely to notice.