2

i am trying to gather statistics from the chrony daemon on my EC 2 (Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS) instance. i have followed aws's guide on how to set it up and it runs as expected.

i need to compare the time sync difference between aws and another service provider we use, that is why i enabled logging on chrony.

but it doesn't log anything in the /var/log/chrony folder

this is my configuration:

server 169.254.169.123 prefer iburst

pool ntp.ubuntu.com        iburst maxsources 4
pool 0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org iburst maxsources 1
pool 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org iburst maxsources 1
pool 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org iburst maxsources 2

# This directive specify the location of the file containing ID/key pairs for
# NTP authentication.
keyfile /etc/chrony/chrony.keys

# This directive specify the file into which chronyd will store the rate
# information.
driftfile /var/lib/chrony/chrony.drift

# Uncomment the following line to turn logging on.
log tracking measurements statistics

# Log files location.
logdir /var/log/chrony


# Stop bad estimates upsetting machine clock.
maxupdateskew 100.0

# This directive enables kernel synchronisation (every 11 minutes) of the
# real-time clock. Note that it can’t be used along with the 'rtcfile' directive.
rtcsync

# Step the system clock instead of slewing it if the adjustment is larger than
# one second, but only in the first three clock updates.
makestep 1 3

i have checked permissions on the folder and everything, but there are no log files.

hope you guys can help me with that

Eitan Kats
  • 123
  • 1
  • 5

2 Answers2

3

I just verified chrony logging by doing the following:

  1. created a default Ubuntu 18.04 LTS EC2 instance - AMI id: ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-bionic-18.04-amd64-server-20180912 (ami-07a3bd4944eb120a0)
  2. installed chrony: sudo apt install chrony
  3. edited the default configuration in /etc/chrony/chronyd.conf to
    • add the AWS NTP source shown in your configuration above
    • uncomment the log tracking ... line
  4. restarted chrony: sudo service chrony restart
  5. confirmed that logging is working: 
    root@ip-172-31-1-97:~# ls -la /var/log/chrony/
total 32
drwxr-xr-x  2 _chrony _chrony  4096 Mar  7 22:20 .
drwxrwxr-x 10 root    syslog   4096 Mar  7 22:19 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 _chrony _chrony 10686 Mar  7 22:22 measurements.log
-rw-r--r--  1 _chrony _chrony  4797 Mar  7 22:22 statistics.log
-rw-r--r--  1 _chrony _chrony  1854 Mar  7 22:21 tracking.log
  6. Confirmed that chrony is contacting its sources: 
    root@ip-172-31-1-97:~# chronyc -n sources
210 Number of sources = 9
MS Name/IP address         Stratum Poll Reach LastRx Last sample               
===============================================================================
^* 169.254.169.123               3   6   377    48    +16us[  +46us] +/-  300us
^- 91.189.94.4                   2   7   241   103   +934us[ +957us] +/-  161ms
^- 91.189.91.157                 2   6    35    39  +2471us[+2471us] +/-  153ms
^- 91.189.89.199                 2   7    41   167  +1194us[+1203us] +/-  169ms
^? 2001:67c:1560:8003::c8        0   6     0     -     +0ns[   +0ns] +/-    0ns
^- 129.250.35.250                2   6   377    49   +914us[ +944us] +/-   93ms
^- 61.68.38.238                  3   6   377    49  -1395us[-1366us] +/-   59ms
^- 203.23.237.200                2   6   377    48  +2176us[+2176us] +/-   41ms
^- 150.101.217.196               2   6   377    48  -5039us[-5009us] +/-   76ms

So, my best guesses at the differences between your test and mine are:

  1. You've used a non-official Ubuntu 18.04 AMI

  2. You've used a non-official chrony package instead of just installing the one from the Ubuntu archives

  3. You've forgotten to restart chrony after changing the configuration

Paul Gear
  • 3,938
  • 15
  • 36
1

Have you tried looking to see if Chrony is logging to systemd? Try:

journalctl -u Chronyd.service
David O.
  • 124
  • 3