CLOCKDIFF (man8)

CLOCKDIFF

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
WARNINGS
SEE ALSO
REFERENCES
AUTHOR
SECURITY
AVAILABILITY


NAME

clockdiff − measure clock difference between hosts

SYNOPSIS

clockdiff [−o] [−o1] [−−time−format ctime iso] [−V] {destination}

DESCRIPTION

clockdiff Measures clock difference between us and destination with 1 msec resolution using ICMP TIMESTAMP [2] packets or, optionally, IP TIMESTAMP option [3] option added to ICMP ECHO. [1]

OPTIONS

−o

Use IP TIMESTAMP with ICMP ECHO instead of ICMP TIMESTAMP messages. It is useful with some destinations, which do not support ICMP TIMESTAMP (f.e. Solaris <2.4).

−o1

Slightly different form of −o, namely it uses three−term IP TIMESTAMP with prespecified hop addresses instead of four term one. What flavor works better depends on target host. Particularly, −o is better for Linux.

−T, −−time−format ctime iso

Print time stamp in output either ISO−8601 format or classical ctime format. The ctime format is default. The ISO time stamp includes timezone, and is easier to parse.

−I

Alias of −−time−format iso option and argument.

−h, −−help

Print help and exit.

−V, −−version

Print version and exit.

WARNINGS

• Some nodes (Cisco) use non−standard timestamps, which is allowed by RFC, but makes timestamps mostly useless.

• Some nodes generate messed timestamps (Solaris>2.4), when run xntpd. Seems, its IP stack uses a corrupted clock source, which is synchronized to time−of−day clock periodically and jumps randomly making timestamps mostly useless. Good news is that you can use NTP in this case, which is even better.

• clockdiff shows difference in time modulo 24 days.

SEE ALSO

ping(8), arping(8), tracepath(8).

REFERENCES

[1] ICMP ECHO, RFC0792, page 14.

[2] ICMP TIMESTAMP, RFC0792, page 16.

[3] IP TIMESTAMP option, RFC0791, 3.1, page 16.

AUTHOR

clockdiff was compiled by Alexey Kuznetsov . It was based on code borrowed from BSD timed daemon.

SECURITY

clockdiff requires CAP_NET_RAW capability to be executed. It is safe to be used as set−uid root.

AVAILABILITY

clockdiff is part of iputils package.


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