chrony/chronyd.8.in

.TH CHRONYD 8 "@MAN_DATE@" "chrony @VERSION@" "System Administration"
.SH NAME
chronyd \- chrony background daemon

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B chronyd
[\fIOPTIONS\fR] [\fIconfiguration commands\fR]

.SH DESCRIPTION
\fIchrony\fR is a pair of programs for maintaining the accuracy of computer
clocks. \fBchronyd\fR is a background daemon program that can be started at boot
time.

\fBchronyd\fR is a daemon which runs in background on the
system.  It obtains measurements (e.g. via the network) of the
system's offset relative to other systems, and adjusts the system
time accordingly.  For isolated systems, the user can periodically
enter the correct time by hand (using \fIchronyc\fR).  In either case,
\fBchronyd\fR determines the rate at which the computer
gains or loses time, and compensates for this.

.SH USAGE
\fBchronyd\fR is usually started at boot-time and requires superuser
privileges.

If \fBchronyd\fR has been installed to its default location
\fI@SBINDIR@/chronyd\fR, starting it is simply a matter of entering the
command:

\fI@SBINDIR@/chronyd\fR

Information messages and warnings will be logged to syslog.

If no configuration commands are specified on the command line,
\fBchronyd\fR will read the commands from the configuration file
(default \fI@SYSCONFDIR@/chrony.conf\fR).

.SH OPTIONS
A summary of the options supported by \fBchronyd\fR is included below.

.TP
\fB\-P\fR \fIpriority\fR
This option will select the SCHED_FIFO real-time scheduler at the specified
priority (which must be between 0 and 100).  This mode is supported only on
Linux.
.TP
.B \-m
This option will lock chronyd into RAM so that it will never be paged out.
This mode is only supported on Linux.
.TP
.B \-n
When run in this mode, the program will not detach itself from the
terminal.
.TP
.B \-d
When run in this mode, the program will not detach itself from the
terminal, and all messages will be sent to the terminal instead of
to syslog.  When \fBchronyd\fR was compiled with debugging support,
this option can be used twice to print also debugging messages.
.TP
\fB\-f\fR \fIconf-file\fR
This option can be used to specify an alternate location for the
configuration file (default \fI@SYSCONFDIR@/chrony.conf\fR).
.TP
.B \-r
This option will reload sample histories for each of the servers being used.
These histories are created by using the \fIdump\fR command in \fIchronyc\fR,
or by setting the \fIdumponexit\fR directive in the configuration file.  This
option is useful if you want to stop and restart \fBchronyd\fR briefly for any
reason, e.g. to install a new version.  However, it only makes sense on
systems where the kernel can maintain clock compensation whilst not under
\fBchronyd\fR's control.  The only version where this happens so far is Linux.
On systems where this is not the case, e.g. Solaris and SunOS the option
should not be used.
.TP
.B \-R
When this option is used, the \fIinitstepslew\fR directive and the
\fImakestep\fR directive used with a positive limit will be ignored. This
option is useful when restarting \fBchronyd\fR and can be used in conjunction
with the \fB-r\fR option.
.TP
.B \-s
This option will set the system clock from the computer's real-time
clock.  This is analogous to supplying the \fI-s\fR flag to the
\fI/sbin/hwclock\fR program during the Linux boot sequence.

Support for real-time clocks is limited at present - the criteria
are described in the section on the \fIrtcfile\fR directive in the
documentation supplied with the distribution.

If used in conjunction with the \fB-r\fR flag, \fBchronyd\fR will attempt
to preserve the old samples after setting the system clock from
the real time clock (RTC).  This can be used to allow \fBchronyd\fR to
perform long term averaging of the gain or loss rate across system
reboots, and is useful for dial-up systems that are shut down when
not in use.  For this to work well, it relies on \fBchronyd\fR having
been able to determine accurate statistics for the difference
between the RTC and system clock last time the computer was on.

If \fBchronyd\fR doesn't support the RTC on your computer or there is no RTC
installed, the system clock will be set with this option forward to the time of
the last modification of the drift file (specified by the \fIdriftfile\fR
directive) to restore the system time at which \fBchronyd\fR was previously
stopped.
.TP
\fB\-u\fR \fIuser\fR
This option sets the name of the user to which will \fBchronyd\fR switch to
drop root privileges if compiled with Linux capabilities support (default
\fB@DEFAULT_USER@\fR).
.TP
.B \-q
When run in this mode, chronyd will set the system clock once
and exit.  It will not detach from the terminal.
.TP
.B \-Q
This option is similar to \fB\-q\fR, but it will only print the offset and
not correct the clock.
.TP
.B \-v
This option displays \fBchronyd\fR's version number to the terminal and exits
.TP
.B \-4
Resolve hostnames only to IPv4 addresses and create only IPv4 sockets.
.TP
.B \-6
Resolve hostnames only to IPv6 addresses and create only IPv6 sockets.

.SH FILES
\fI@SYSCONFDIR@/chrony.conf\fR

.SH BUGS
To report bugs, please visit \fIhttp://chrony.tuxfamily.org/\fR

.SH "SEE ALSO"
\fBchronyd\fR is documented in detail in the documentation supplied with the
distribution (\fIchrony.txt\fR and \fIchrony.texi\fR).

.BR chrony(1),
.BR chronyc(1),
.BR chrony.conf(5),
.BR hwclock(8),
.BR ntpd(8)

.I http://chrony.tuxfamily.org/

.SH AUTHOR
Richard Curnow <rc@rc0.org.uk>

This man-page was written by Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org> as part
of "The Missing Man Pages Project".  Please see
\fIhttp://www.netmeister.org/misc/m2p2/index.html\fR for details.

The complete chrony documentation is supplied in texinfo format.