ntpq - standard NTP query program

Force DNS resolution of following host names on the command line to the IPv4 namespace.

Force DNS resolution of following host names on the command line to the IPv6 namespace.

Enable authentication with the numbered key.

The following argument is interpreted as an interactive format command and is added to the list of commands to be executed on the specified host(s). Multiple -c options may be given.

Increase debugging level by 1.

The debug level is set to the following integer argument.

Log debugging output to the specified file.

Print a usage message summarizing options end exit.

Output all host addresses in numeric format rather than converting to the canonical host names. You may get hostnames anyway for peers in the initialization phase before DNS has resolved the peer name.

Output host addresses by: Names passed to ntpd, then names reverse resolved from addresses and finally, IP addresses themselves

Output host addresses by: Names passed to ntpd, then IP addresses themselves

Print a list of the peers known to the server as well as a summary of their state; this is equivalent to the peers interactive command. The refid field is as described under "Event Messages and Status Words" in the NTP documentation on the Web.

Specify a keyfile. ntpq will look in this file for the key specified with -a.

Print the version string and exit.

Wide mode: if the host name or IP Address doesn’t fit, write the full name/address and indent the next line, so columns line up. The default truncates the name or address.

Force the terminal width. Only relevant for composition of the peers display.

Display timing information with units.

A ? by itself will print a list of all the command keywords known to ntpq. A ? followed by a command keyword will print function and usage information about the command.

The arguments to this command consist of a list of items of the form name = value, where the = value is ignored and can be omitted in read requests. ntpq maintains an internal list in which data to be included in control messages can be assembled and sent using the readlist and writelist commands described below. The addvars command allows variables and optional values to be added to the list. If more than one variable is to be added, the list should be comma-separated and not contain white space. The rmvars command can be used to remove individual variables from the list, while the clearlist command removes all variables from the list.

Normally ntpq does not authenticate requests unless they are write requests. The command authenticate yes causes ntpq to send authentication with all requests it makes. Authenticated requests causes some servers to handle requests slightly differently. The command authenticate without arguments causes ntpq to display whether or not ntpq is currently authenticating requests.

Display server messages in prettyprint format.

Turns internal query program debugging on and off.

Disables or enables the dropping of control packets by ntpq for testing. Probabilities 0 and 1 should be certainly accepted and discarded respectively. No default, but 0.1 should be a one in ten loss rate.

Displays or sets the file for debug logging. <stderr> will send logs to standard error.

Specify a time interval to be added to timestamps included in requests which require authentication; this is used to enable (unreliable) server reconfiguration over long delay network paths or between machines whose clocks are unsynchronized. The server does not now require timestamps in authenticated requests so that this command may be obsolete.

Exit ntpq.

Set the host to which future queries will be sent. The name may be either a DNS name or a numeric address.

If yes is specified, host names are printed in information displays. If no is specified, numeric addresses are printed instead. The default is yes unless modified using the command line -n switch.

This command specifies the key number to be used to authenticate configuration requests; this must correspond to a key ID configured with the controlkey command in the server’s ntp.conf

Specify the digest algorithm to use for authenticated requests, with default MD5. The keytype must match what the server is expecting for the specified key ID.

Sets the NTP version number which ntpq claims in packets. Defaults to 2, Note that mode 6 control messages (and modes, for that matter) didn’t exist in NTP version 1.

This command prompts for a password to authenticate requests. The password must match what the server is expecting. Passwords longer than 20 bytes are assumed to be hex encoding.

Exit ntpq.

Display server messages as received and without reformatting. The only formatting/interpretation done on the data is to transform non-ASCII data into a printable (but barely understandable) form.

Specify a timeout period for responses to server queries. The default is about 5000 milliseconds. Note that since ntpq retries each query once after a timeout, the total waiting time for a timeout will be twice the timeout value set.

Toggle whether times in the peers display are shown with units.

Print the version of the ntpq program.

Display a list of mobilized associations in the form

ind assid status conf reach auth condition last_event cnt

Display the authentication statistics.

Display a list of clock variables for those associations supporting a reference clock.

Send the remainder of the command line, including whitespace, to the server as a run-time configuration command in the same format as the configuration file. This command is experimental until further notice and clarification. Authentication is of course required.

Send each line of filename to the server as run-time configuration commands in the same format as the configuration file. This command is experimental until further notice and clarification. Authentication is required.

Display statistics for each local network address. Authentication is required.

Display network and reference clock I/O statistics.

Display kernel loop and PPS statistics. As with other ntpq output, times are in milliseconds. The precision value displayed is in milliseconds as well, unlike the precision system variable.

Perform the same function as the associations command, except display mobilized and unmobilized associations.

Print a peer spreadsheet for the appropriate IP version(s). dstadr (associated with any given IP version).

Display monitor facility statistics.

Normally, the mrulist command retrieves an entire MRU report (possibly consisting of more than one MRU span), sorts it, and presents the result. But attempting to fetch an entire MRU report may fail on a server so loaded that none of its MRU entries age out before they are shipped. With this option, each segment is reported as it arrives.

Obtain and print traffic counts collected and maintained by the monitor facility. This is useful for tracking who uses or abuses your server.

Perform the same function as the readvar command, except for a range of association IDs. This range is determined from the association list cached by the most recent associations command.

Obtain and print the old-style list of all peers and clients showing dstadr (associated with any given IP version), rather than the refid.

Perform the same function as the associations command, except that it uses previously stored data rather than making a new query.

Display a list of peers in the form

Display a list of peers in the form:

[tally]remote refid assid st t when pool reach delay offset jitter

Display a list of peers in the form

Show the statistics for the peer with the given assocID.

Display the specified variables. If assocID is zero, the variables are from the system variables name space, otherwise they are from the peer variables name space. The assocID is required, as the same name can occur in both spaces. If no name is included, all operative variables in the name space are displayed. In this case only, if the assocID is omitted, it is assumed zero. Multiple names are specified with comma separators and without whitespace. Note that time values are represented in milliseconds and frequency values in parts-per-million (PPM). Some NTP timestamps are represented in the format YYYYMMDDTTTT, where YYYY is the year, MM the month of the year, DD the day of the month and TTTT the time of day.

Show the access control (restrict) list for ntpq.

Display interval timer counters.

Write the system or peer variables included in the variable list.

Write the specified variables. If the assocID is zero, the variables are from the system variables name space, otherwise they are from the peer variables name space. The assocID is required, as the same name can occur in both spaces.

Display operational summary.

Print statistics counters maintained in the protocol module. Note that the relationships among these counters can look unlikely because packets can get flagged for inclusion in exception statistics in more than one way, for example by having both a bad length and an old version.

Display a summary of the NTS state, including both the the NTS client and NTS server components. Note that the format of the output text may change as this feature is developed. This command is experimental until further notice and clarification.