I started a thread about syncing time between machines in an office over at the Red Hat nahant list. Feck I hate mailman. The thread continues in the next month, detailing NTP syncing best practices.

A summary:

• Don’t use CRON fools!
• Use Red Hat’s tool X-version of system-config-date and use it to set up ntp (GOSH, that sucks!)
• ntpdate for laptops and workstations that reboot often, because you should only use ntpdate on boot as big time shifts during a running system can cause havoc
• Otherwise run ntpd for machines that stay on. Caveat: If time is out by more than 1000 seconds, it won’t update. First ntpdate then restart ntpd. Urgh.
• DST is a pain.
• Win32 time sync net time /setsntp:yourlocalRHserver (on the Domain Controller)