Beaglebone Black NTP Support - cu-ecen-aeld/buildroot-assignments-base GitHub Wiki

AESD Beaglebone Black Buildroot NTP instructions

This page includes the notes about setting up NTP server packages for Beaglebone Black hardware.

Buildroot config changes

  • modify the buildroot configuration with the command make menuconfig from the buildroot directory of the local project repository.
  • Navigate to Target Package >> Networking Applications. Search for ntp and enable it.
  • Enable necessary sub-package under NTP like
    • ntpd: To demonize NTP server sync at the time of board boot up.
    • ntpdate: Command used to set the local date and time by polling NTP servers specified.
    • ntptime: Utility is used to read kernel time variable
    • ntpq: Utility used as an alternative to ntpstat to check the NTP server status with respect to local time.
  • Save the configuration by using save-config.sh script present in the project root directory.
  • Check the aesd_beaglebone_defconfig file under ../base_external/configs/ directory to have BR2_PACKAGE_NTP, BR2_PACKAGE_NTP_NTPDATE, BR2_PACKAGE_NTP_NTPQ, BR2_PACKAGE_NTP, BR2_PACKAGE_NTP_NTPTIME packages added and enabled. [ Reference commit 1and commit 2]
  • Use build.sh script from the project root directory to build new image which would include the configured NTP packages.

NTP implementation check

  • Call date command from the Beaglebone Black's command line. The command to show the date and time which is in sync with the current UTC time.
  • Use ntpq utility to query the NTP server.

    • Call ntpq -np command as shown in the image below. This command should list a query for the peers known to server.
      image

    • In response to the command, the running NTP configuration should show a list of queries for the addresses of the remote peer. The peer with the * sign indicates the peer is declared the system peer and lends its variables to the system variables.
      image

    • If the board is not connected to the NTP server; either because of the configuration issue or because Beaglebone is not connected to the internet; it would not show the query and display a message shown below.
      image

References