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I know the OpenBSD team wrote a from-scratch replacement for ntpdOpenNTPD—that is available via pkgsrc/ports. My question is more about the base system: Is OpenNTPD the default ntpd in the base system in NetBSD or FreeBSD? For that matter, what about Linux distros, some of which (Gentoo or Arch, for example) are more "BSDish"?

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How is Gentoo BSDish? –  Jürgen A. Erhard Feb 8 '11 at 20:41
@jae portage and Gentoo's rc system are both BSDish. There may be other similarities, but those are the specifics I had in mind. –  Hank Gay Feb 9 '11 at 1:09
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up vote 2 down vote accepted

I just looked at the FreeBSD source for the non-ports version of ntpd, the FreeBSD ntpd is the ntp.org version. There's an openntpd in ports though. It looks like NetBSD has a package for ntpd and openntpd.

I can't see any reason why you couldn't run OpenNTPd on any Linux distro. It might make sense, considering the weird licensing that exists on the current ntp.org ntpd (which is mostly BSD, with a touch of MIT, GPL and public licenses.)

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openntpd has to be patched to be usefull on Linux or it won't adjust the system clock. Moreover, the porting to other OS is made by a separate team and is always behind the main branch, so it has very small chances to become the default ntpd on any other OS than OpenBSD.

If you are looking for an alternative ntp server, the only actual competitor to ntd.org ntpd seems to be chrony.

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openntpd has been in debian for ages... –  dfc Oct 20 '11 at 2:03
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openntpd is included in Ubuntu - since Dapper (8.10 that is)

So, it must be the same for Debian. I am sure you can easily find the same information for rpm based distros.

But it is not default ntp daemon.

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Has OpenBSD's ntpd replacement been ported to other BSDs? Or Linux?


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