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<title>OpenNTPD: Features</title>
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<h2 id=OpenBSD>
<a href="index.html">
<i>Open</i><b>NTPD</b></a>
Features
</h2>
<hr>

<p>
Many NTP daemons fail in different areas. Some are complex, follow
archaic design practices, and are difficult to configure. Others are
overly simplistic, only support client-side synchronization, or are
simply immature.

<p>
In an increasingly NTP-synchronized world, it is important to have a
free implementation that provides good time synchronization while
still maintaining high security and ease of configurability.

<p>
To satisfy those goals, OpenNTPD has:

<ul>
<li>Over 10 years of proven reliability.

<li>A simple and easily understandable codebase.

<li>Server and client-side synchronization. OpenNTPD is suitable for
    everything from synchronizing your home router, laptop, or
    thousand-node server cluster.

<li>Privilege separation that isolates the unprivileged networking
    code from the privileged time-setting code. The daemon runs
    in a chroot environment, further limiting its capabilities.

<li>Privilege-separated DNS support that works dynamically during
    runtime, permitting late resolution even if the network is down
    at startup.  This is important for long-running use of the
    <a href="http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/">NTP pools</a> cluster.

<li>Besides using
    <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/adjtime">adjtime(2)</a>
    for coarse time adjustments, OpenNTPD can do fine-grained time
    adjustment via the
    <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/adjfreq">adjfreq(2)</a>
    and ntp_adjtime system calls.

<li>Integration with time-synchronization hardware where the
    <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/sensorsd">sensorsd(8)</a>
    framework is available.

<li>Support for validation of received ntp time against a https secured
    secondary source.

<li>Ability to bootstrap time in a secure way, even for machines lacking a
    battery backed up real time clock.

<li>Support for virtual routing tables (called rdomains in OpenBSD)
    to isolate the networks that OpenNTPD can reach.

<li>An <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/ntpctl">ntpctl(8)</a>
    command for querying real-time synchronization status.

<li>Integrates the latest secure API advances from OpenBSD such as
    <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/getentropy">getentropy(2)</a>,
    <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/arc4random">arc4random(3)</a>
    (a fail-safe CSRNG that works in chroot environments), and
    <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/reallocarray">reallocarray(3)</a>
    (an integer overflow-checking malloc/calloc/realloc replacement).

</ul>