I have a Sonoma GPS time server and a server, which should synchronise itself to the GPS clock, and serve as a fallback option. The time should be synchronised using PTP (Precision-Time-Protocol). This is the current configuration:
GPS dedicated time server PTP settings:
sync_interval 1
announce_interval 2
priority_1 127
priority_2 128
delay_mechanism E2E
ptp_domain 0
time_mode PTP
multicast_ttl 1
Fallback time server arguments:
-S -p 163 # Enable syslog, priority_1 163
Client arguments:
-S -g # Enable syslog, slave only
What happens right now is, that if the master time server is gone, the clients switch from the master to the fallback. So with that part I'm happy, but here the questions:
- The fallback server doesn't keep itself up to date from the main time source, so when the GPS clock goes down, and the clients switch to the fallback, they suffer big time jumps. Are there any PTP settings, so that the fallback server synchronizes itself constantly to the main time source, if it is available?
- Are the priority settings correct, so the higher the number, the lower the priority? And what is the priority_2 good for at all? I never saw any documentation about that, but that's what seemed to work in the end.
- The GPS signal is not really reliable. When the signal drops, the GPS clock stops working as a time server and the fallback server takes over. Nevertheless, the internal clock of the GPS time server would be much better than the fallback server ones. Any ideas how to keep it working as master, even if the signal is gone?
Btw, I know, one question-one answer, anyways, I guess the questions are closely related to each other, and if you're not happy with reading three questions, just ignore 2+3.
