Gfilui

First, I installed the ntp package through sudo apt-get install ntp

I accessed /etc/ntp.conf to change the servers to a few local ones based on country, then I saved and restarted it using sudo systemctl restart ntp then checked the status with sudo systemctl status ntp which is shown running.

I also did ntpq -p which gave the below result, I think this means the client is running:

 remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
==============================================================================
 ntp.ubuntu.com .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
*time-a-g.nist.g .NIST. 1 u - 64 77 11.567 -7.287 7.636
-174.138.107.37 46.243.26.34 2 u 63 64 37 84.975 0.159 4.474
-ns3.weiszhostin 128.138.141.172 2 u 1 64 77 69.844 -11.884 6.043
+li290-38.member 128.138.141.172 2 u 65 64 37 43.448 -3.202 6.023
+pugot.canonical 145.238.203.14 2 u 61 64 37 79.540 -5.833 4.040
+alphyn.canonica 132.246.11.231 2 u 4 64 77 11.714 -5.017 7.244
+chilipepper.can 145.238.203.14 2 u 61 64 37 78.136 -4.269 4.769
+golem.canonical 145.238.203.14 2 u 55 64 37 81.139 -3.766 4.748

However, I can't seem to get the daemon to run. I found that out when I did sudo systemctl status ntpd, then it gave the below result:

ntpd.service 
Loaded: not-found (Reason: No such file or directory)
Active: inactive (dead)

I thought it was not started at first so I did sudo systemctl start ntpd, but it gave:

Failed to start ntpd.service: Unit ntpd.service not found.

That's when I found out something is seriously wrong, I checked ls -l /etc/init.d and found only ntp is in the list, ntpd can't be found. I also tried to reinstall ntp but that didn't help.

Any ideas? Thanks a lot!

On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS the ntp package contain:

1. client and utilites - /usr/bin/calc_tickadj, /usr/bin/ntpdc, /usr/bin/ntpq, /usr/bin/ntpsweep, /usr/bin/ntptrace, /usr/bin/update-leap.


2. daemon (/usr/sbin/ntpd), started by /etc/init.d/ntp.

You may restart the service with

sudo systemctl restart ntp.service

or

sudo service ntp restart

You can check that server is running with

sudo service ntp status
sudo systemctl status ntp.service
sudo netstat -pl | grep ntp

on my system it returns:

$ sudo netstat -pl | grep ntp
udp 0 0 10.0.2.15:ntp *:* 12303/ntpd 
udp 0 0 localhost:ntp *:* 12303/ntpd 
udp 0 0 *:ntp *:* 12303/ntpd 
udp6 0 0 fe80::99a2:45db:62e:ntp [::]:* 12303/ntpd 
udp6 0 0 ip6-localhost:ntp [::]:* 12303/ntpd 
udp6 0 0 [::]:ntp [::]:* 12303/ntp

And it was started by systemd:

$ pstree -l -s -p -a 12303
systemd,1 splash
 └─ntpd,12303 -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 121:129

$ ps -P 12303
 PID PSR TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
12303 0 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 121:129