Using Unraid as a time server

[art-101]

Hi,

 

Here's my situation.

I have 3 openelec boxes and then my Unraid (5.0.6, it works and it's not needing any updates at the minute). Two of the OE boxes are pure media players in the living room and one in the bedroom. The third is purely for streaming live TV between the two boxes.

 

I know I could try the tvheadend plugin on unraid but I like to separate my eggs.

 

I also have no internet at home and have no intention of getting it until the local providers can provide a reasonable service.

 

So the media players never have the right time so it means the EPG is never right. Unraid on the other hand has always kept the time

 

I've read that unraid has an NTP service built into it but I can't get my players to see it, I've tried pointing to it's address to no avail.

 

Any chance someone could give some pointers on what I'm missing here please?

 

Thanks

 

Art

[CHBMB]

 

I also have no internet at home and have no intention of getting it until the local providers can provide a reasonable service.

 

 

Can't help with the NTP question, but just in case you're tempted, don't upgrade to the V6.2 Beta series they currently need an internet connection to boot.  I believe this will be removed in the final version as it's so LT can stop people from booting a particular beta if they find a data threatening bug.

 

And you can probably guess from my signature what my advice would be on your TVHeadend issue... 

[art-101]

Thanks for the 6.2 beta warning, I suspect I won't be looking at upgrading until closer to the end of the year.

Your builds look interesting, may go that way when I update, reduces the machines under the stairs by one which should please the Other Half.

 

Thanks

Art

[RobJ]

Can you make sure the NTP server is enabled?  By default, it's not.  It's in the time settings, would need one time server set, such as pool.ntp.org, even though you won't be able to reach it without Internet.  Then try pointing to it again.  At least your machines would be in sync.

 

I don't know how it behaves when it can't get accurate time info itself.  It could conceivably indicate it can't respond to time requests since it hasn't got accurate time.

 

How do you get EPG info?

[Squid]

A bit of a chicken and egg scenario, but if you enable dockerhub searches in CA and then search for NTP, there are a bunch of ntp server dockers available.

 

Downside is that you need internet to

 

#1 upgrade to 6.1.9 (which you'll require to run CA / the app)

#2 Install CA

#3 Install the appropriate server

[bubbaQ]

All you need is a few lines in your go script, and a config file.

 

Delete /etc/ntp.conf.

 

Put this in the file /etc/default/ntpdate:

 

NTPDATE_USE_NTP_CONF=no
NTPSERVERS="pool.ntp.org"
NTPOPTIONS="-u"

 

then run

 

/etc/rc.d/rc.ntpd start

 

As Squid noted though, you will have to have Internet access

 

 

[art-101]

Been browsing through the directory structure and was looking at ntp.conf and noticed it has a line labeled restrict 127.0.0.1

I've tried to comment it out but when I restart the ntpd it goes back to how it was.

 

So it looks like the default settings don't allow anything to get the time from unraid but I don't know how to change that.

 

Any hints please?

 

Thanks

Art

[RobJ]

Been browsing through the directory structure and was looking at ntp.conf and noticed it has a line labeled restrict 127.0.0.1

I've tried to comment it out but when I restart the ntpd it goes back to how it was.

 

So it looks like the default settings don't allow anything to get the time from unraid but I don't know how to change that.

 

In case you were not aware, unRAID loads entirely into RAM, builds a fresh OS every boot, so you have to add persistence by using the config/go file on the flash drive, or other means of persistence.  You can copy your ntp.conf to the flash, add a copy command to go to put it in the right location, and restart NTP.

[trurl]

Don't know exactly what your problem is, or whether there is any point if your unRAID can't reach a timeserver itself, but I have been using my unRAID to serve time on my LAN since at least v5 if not 4.7. And I didn't have to do anything at the command line to make it work.