GPS / PPS time sources
GPSd time source
Instead of using another NTP server as a time source, it is also possible to use time data from GPSd as a time source for ntpd-rs. GPSd is able to interpret GPS signals from a GPS receiver, from which it can derive the current time.
To provide this information, gpsd tries to open a socket at /run/chrony.XXXX.sock, where XXXX is replaced with the device name of the GPS device. When running ntpd-rs with reduced permissions, this socket cannot be created by ntpd-rs. We therefore have to configure systemd (or an equivalent startup daemon) to create a symlink to a folder ntpd-rs can create the socket in. We recommend linking to /run/ntpd-rs/chrony.XXXX.sock, which can be done with the following systemd unit:
[Unit]
Description=GPSD Socket Shim
Documentation=https://github.com/pendulum-project/ntpd-rs
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "ln -s /run/ntpd-rs/chrony.XXXX.sock /run/chrony.XXXX.sock"
GPSd can then be added as a time source for ntpd-rs by adding the following to the configuration:
For socket sources such as a GPS device from gpsd, ntpd-rs is unable to estimate the uncertainty of the timing data. Therefore, you should provide an estimate (corresponding to 1 standard deviation) of this noise yourself through the precision field. For typical GPS receivers, an uncertainty somewhere in the range of 1 to 100 ms is reasonable.
Setting up GPSd
In order for GPSd to connect to ntpd-rs, GPSd must start after ntpd-rs and after the socket shim has been created. This is because ntpd-rs needs to create the socket for GPSd, which can only find the socket if it exists at the moment GPSd starts.
GPSd can be manually restarted using:
Systemd can be told to enforce such a starting order using the Wants, Before and After keys in the Unit section. It is recommended to modify the unit files for ntpd-rs and gpsd through systemctl edit when making these changes.
For help with setting up GPSd on a Raspberry Pi, see for example this guide.
Pulse Per Second (PPS)
Ntpd-rs also supports using PPS timing data via Kernel PPS, based on RFC 2783.
Here is an example configuration of a 1 PPS device in ntpd-rs:
By default, PPS sources are treated as 1 PPS sources, which send a pulse every rounded second. For e.g. a 10 PPS device, the source can be configured with a period of 0.1 seconds:
Running with GPS/PPS sources only
When running without any other sources but a GPS and/or PPS device, your setup likely has less than 3 sources. This means you will also need to update the minimum number of sources that need to agree on the time before it is accepted. With only GPS/PPS as a source, the defense in depth of more than one agreeing source is less necessary as those are harder to attack, and this can be disabled by adding the following snippet to your ntp.toml