NTP Pool Monitor

Client installation

Configure the appropriate repository (test or production) from builds.ntppool.dev/repo/.

Install the ntppool-agent package, and start the systemd units for test and/or production (example below starts both).

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ntppool-agent

for f in test prod; do
  sudo systemctl enable --now ntppool-agent@$n;
done

sudo journalctl -u ntppool-agent@\* -f

Installed from the rpm or deb package, state will by default be stored in /var/run/ntppool-agent. You can change the default in /var/default/ntppool-agent, or with the --state-dir parameter or by setting $MONITOR_STATE_DIR in the environment.

The --env parameter specifies which server to use (prod, test or devel).

Client requirements

A well connected Linux or FreeBSD system (x86_64 or arm64).

Each instance (for the beta system and/or the production system) takes less than 30MB memory currently and approximately no CPU (very little anyway). However it's best if the system isn't excessively loaded, as that can impact the NTP measurements. The network needs to be consistently low latency "to the internet".

A future version will either require or work best with traceroute installed and available as well.

Server / API configuration

Environment variables

DEPLOYMENT_MODE devel
DATABASE_DSN database connection string
- example: "tcp(ntp-db-mysql)/betadb?charset=utf8&parseTime=true"
JWT_KEY key for signing JWTs for the mosquitto server
VAULT_CACERT path for public vault signing certificate
VAULT_ADDR URL for vault server
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT URL for open telemetry endpoint

Files

If you don't add username and password to the DATABASE_DSN, it has to be provided in a file named database.yaml or /vault/secrets/database.yaml in the format:

mysql:
  user: some-db-user
  pass: ...