I've been running 5.3.2R1 since Aug 12th, and I had set up the timed to :

timed.enable on timed.log off timed.max_skew 2s timed.proto ntp timed.sched hourly timed.servers 205.246.15.5

Today, I started seeing in my syslogs :

..... Tue Nov 2 10:10:42 CST [Java Thread]: TimeDaemon: NTP server '205.246.15.5' reports that the time is Tue Nov 02 10:14:45 CST 1999,

for both of the toasters. Anyone know what this is about? these toasters have been up for around 40 days or so...

The syslog messages result from a misunderstanding regarding the meaning of the "timed.max_skew" option. Looking at the name of the option, one could reasonably assume that it controls how far out of whack we'll let the filer's notion of time get before we synchronize with the time server. In fact, it controls how far out of whack a timer server's time can be before the filer will no longer synchronize with the timer server. We use this field to prevent "time poisoning" of the filer by a grossly inaccurate time server. If we had it to do over again, we'd probably change the name of this option to something less confusing.

So, when you specified "options timed.max_skew 2s", you were actually saying "if the time reported by the time server is more than 2 seconds away from the filer's notion of the correct time, don't synchronize to the time server." You can eliminate these messages, and get the filers back into synch with the time server by setting "timed.max_skew" to something like 30 minutes (30m).

Sam