What is chrony?

chrony is a versatile implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP). It can synchronize the system clock with NTP servers, reference clocks (e.g. GPS receiver), and manual input using wristwatch and keyboard. It can also operate as an NTPv4 (RFC 5905) server and peer to provide a time service to other computers in the network.


Typical accuracy between two machines on a LAN is in tens, or a few hundreds, of microseconds; over the Internet, accuracy is typically within a few milliseconds. With a good hardware reference clock sub-microsecond accuracy is possible.

Two programs are included in chrony, chronyd is a daemon that can be started at boot time and chronyc is a command-line interface program which can be used to monitor chronyd's performance and to change various operating parameters whilst it is running.

Supported systems

The software is supported on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X and Solaris. Closely related systems may work too. Any other system will likely require a porting exercise.


There are chrony-user and chrony-devel mailing lists for user questions, bug reports and development discussion. See the mailing lists page for more information.

chrony was written by Richard Curnow and is currently maintained by Miroslav Lichvar.


chrony is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.