pool.ntp.org time not updating

[Toddimus]

Hi there,

Just got a second RT-AC87R that I have configured as a wireless bridge, using 5GHZ radio and "WDS" feature in the wireless settings tab. I will eventually run a hard line between the two routers, but for now, I thought I'd try the wireless "bridge" connection.

I first updated the firmware to Merlin's 378.54_2. Then, set up the wireless bridge stuff. It actually works pretty well! Only issue I'm having is that I get the following two warnings on the Administration/System tab:

* Reminder: The System time zone is different from your locale setting.
* Reminder: The system time has not been synchronized with an NTP server.

I'm in the US and bought the router from my local Best Buy, so I'm assuming it is configured for the US FCC regulations and consequently my "locale" should be set properly. I set the time zone to GMT-8 (Pacific).

EDIT: Also, what's interesting is if I change the time zone to GMT-7 (Mountain), the
"* Reminder: The System time zone is different from your locale setting" goes away, but the not sync'd reminder stays.

The router's timestamps say Dec 31, 2014 with the clock counting time upwards. It doesn't seem to want to update or sync. The router has been up for ~4 hours now without updating its time. I have tried nist.time.gov (same one Windows 7 uses) as well, but this doesn't seem to cause an update either.

I do plan to update to the next version of firmware that includes the new radio drivers. I've had success with 54_2, so I'm sticking with that for now.

I did some searching and didn't come up with anything like this issue. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

-Todd

 

[Toddimus]

Anybody? I know, a shameless bump.
The clock is still ticking forwards, but the error messages are still there. I'm up to January 1st 2015.

 

[ASAT]

The router has been up for ~4 hours now without updating its time.

Maybe is DNS issue? You could work around the problem, this way:

Administration -> System -> "Enable JFFS custom scripts and configs" = YES

/jffs/configs/hosts.add

208.75.88.4 pool.ntp.org
204.2.134.162 pool.ntp.org
208.53.158.34 pool.ntp.org
108.61.194.85 pool.ntp.org
108.61.56.35 pool.ntp.org
74.120.8.2 pool.ntp.org
129.6.15.28 pool.ntp.org
66.228.42.59 pool.ntp.org
198.55.111.5 pool.ntp.org
129.6.15.28 pool.ntp.org
204.9.54.119 pool.ntp.org
74.120.8.2 pool.ntp.org

OR, set it manually:

date -s 201509091122.00 # 2015-09-09 11:22am

 

[CooCooCaChoo]

When the router first boots up is when you should this message because the router itself doesn't have a clock source. It syncs with an NTP server every time it powers up.

 

[TonyH]

Anybody? I know, a shameless bump.
The clock is still ticking forwards, but the error messages are still there. I'm up to January 1st 2015.

Can you ping the site?

 

[Toddimus]

Thanks for the ideas folks! Sorry I didn't get back sooner.

@ASAT, I tried the /jffs/configs/hosts.add with the list of servers and IP addresses and did a reboot. That didn't seem to work. I haven't tried manually setting the time, but even if I did, the errors would likely still be there and would surely come back if I rebooted the router or left it without power for any extended period of time. I have tried messing with the DNS settings and enabling/disabling WAN on the downstream router with the errors, but that didn't seem to help either.

@CooCooCaChoo, I've tried rebooting and even letting it run for days at a time now. The NTP server error is still there.

@TonyH, I think you are onto something here... it's probably along the lines of what ASAT was thinking. I tried pinging the site using the Network Tools/Network Analysis tab, but I get the following error:

PING pool.ntp.org (96.44.142.5): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Network is unreachable​

If my WIN7x64 laptop is WiFi connected to the router in question and via Windows I run a CMD terminal command "ping 96.44.142.5", it works just fine.

Any ideas where to go from here? The thing is, I can connect to this "WDS" access point just fine and surf the web, run speedtest, etc. from all client devices. It seems to be doing exactly what the WDS mode is supposed to do. It just won't update its internal clock from the NTP server.

What is curious is the message about the locale setting not matching the time zone. I don't know if these are directly related to the inability to reach the NTP server, but it does seem like there's something going on here.

Could it have something to do with NAT loopback? I left it at the default Merlin option. I haven't tried messing with that yet.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[kvic]

If you ssh into the router (where you found ntp does not work), then ifconfig.

Do you see any interface with a valid IP address? If not, any IP based stuff such NTP is not going to work obviously..

 

[Toddimus]

So I tried ifconfig and this is what it output. Looks reasonable to me, but I'm not exactly sure what I should be looking for. I did change the specific MAC addresses and IP addresses in what I am pasting here to keep some privacy.


br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 14D:XX:XX:XX:XX

inet addr:10.0.0.87 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:80351 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:15317 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:14782499 (14.0 MiB) TX bytes:8790442 (8.3 MiB)



br0:0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 14D: XX:XX:XX:XX

inet addr:169.254.XX.XXX Bcast:169.254.XX.XXX Mask:255.255.255.0

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1



eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 14D: XX:XX:XX:XX

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:81471 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:31741 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:16925173 (16.1 MiB) TX bytes:10568582 (10.0 MiB)

Interrupt:180 Base address:0x5000



eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 14D: XX:XX:XX:XX

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:242224

TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Interrupt:163



lo Link encap:Local Loopback

inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0

UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:16436 Metric:1

RX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:2302 (2.2 KiB) TX bytes:2302 (2.2 KiB)



vlan1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 14D: XX:XX:XX:XX

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:81471 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:28954 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:15458695 (14.7 MiB) TX bytes:9615428 (9.1 MiB)

 

[john9527]

What is your router address of the Main router? Also, on the main router, could you append the output of
iptables -S

 

[kvic]

@Toddimus this router doesn't seem to have a default route. Maybe that's the intended setup for being a wireless bridge. For the sake of completeness, can you also show us output from "netstat -nr"?

 

[Toddimus]

The main router's IP addy is 10.0.0.1. The bridge router's fixed IP is 10.0.0.87.

EDIT/ Nevermind this note. I realize it's just the command prompt showing the build version of Merlin's firmware. Something to note, in the system log and on the system log page, the date/time is Jan 1 2015. The timestamp from the SSH session (I used Putty) is June 11 2015. /EDIT

Here's the outputs of iptables and netstat:

ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC87U_3.0.0.4 Thu Jun 11 02:22:03 UTC 2015

admin@RT-AC87R-UP:/tmp/home/root# iptables -S

-P INPUT ACCEPT

-P FORWARD DROP

-P OUTPUT ACCEPT

-N FUPNP

-N PControls

-N logaccept

-N logdrop

-A INPUT -i eth0 -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type 8 -j DROP

-A INPUT -i eth0 -m state --state INVALID -j DROP

-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

-A INPUT -i lo -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

-A INPUT -i br0 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --sport 67 --dport 68 -j ACCEPT

-A INPUT -j DROP

-A FORWARD -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

-A FORWARD ! -i br0 -o eth0 -j DROP

-A FORWARD -i eth0 -m state --state INVALID -j DROP

-A FORWARD -i br0 -o br0 -j ACCEPT

-A FORWARD -m conntrack --ctstate DNAT -j ACCEPT

-A FORWARD -i br0 -j ACCEPT

-A PControls -j ACCEPT

-A logaccept -m state --state NEW -j LOG --log-prefix "ACCEPT " --log-tcp-sequence --log-tcp-options --log-ip-options

-A logaccept -j ACCEPT

-A logdrop -m state --state NEW -j LOG --log-prefix "DROP " --log-tcp-sequence --log-tcp-options --log-ip-options

-A logdrop -j DROP

admin@RT-AC87R-UP:/tmp/home/root# netstat -nr

Kernel IP routing table

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface

169.254.XX.X 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0

10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0

127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

 

[ILMostro]

Is 10.0.2.87 part of the DHCP address range? Make sure your STATIC ip addresses are separate from DHCP.

 

[Toddimus]

Is 10.0.2.87 part of the DHCP address range? Make sure your STATIC ip addresses are separate from DHCP.

Aha! You may be onto something. I used to have it set up with the DHCP range from 10.0.0.100 to 10.0.0.254, but I think I forgot to set that up after my last firmware update and factory default reset on the main router. It was set to 10.0.0.2 to 10.0.0.254. The directions for the WDS router setup say to leave the second router's DHCP disabled, which I do have. I'll give the updated range a shot! Thanks.

 

[Toddimus]

I tried fixing the DHCP range on the main router to start at 10.0.0.100, but that didn't work. I also tried every permutation I could think of on the problem router's LAN/DHCP page for DNS addresses and default gateway.

I do think it's somehow a DNS issue, but I can't seem to figure it out. The problem router still can't even ping www.google.com from the Network Tools page, but when I'm connected to it via wireless I can load webpages and Speedtest all day long.

Or could it somehow be a NAT loopback thing? It seems like traffic passing through the router is fine but the router itself can't access the web. That still doesn't explain the locale error though...

Ultimately, it really isn't that big of a deal because everything I NEED to work does work. It just seems weird that I'm getting the NTP and locale error messages.

 

[john9527]

Since we are running out of ideas....a couple of last resort things to try...

- On the main router, try setting Respond to ping requests from WAN to Yes on the Firewall page (right now you are dropping icmp type 8 packets)

- Try restarting the ntp service on the bridge router
killall ntp
service restart_ntpc

- Finally, on the main router, try issuing this command (stop invalid packet filtering, sometime it gets it wrong)
iptables -D FORWARD -i eth0 -m state --state INVALID -j DROP

 

[HardCat]

Guys, all I ever had to do to resolve this issue on my network was make sure that AP's or bridges have the Default Gateway set to your main router's IP under Lan Settings. After that is set the time will be set to ntp.pool.org

Cheers...

 

[kvic]

admin@RT-AC87R-UP:/tmp/home/root# netstat -nr

Kernel IP routing table

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface

169.254.XX.X 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0

10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0

127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

This tells us that the rogue router does not have a default route. In such case, even if you specify the external IP of the time server in your NTP request, the router will not know where to send out the packets.

I would try the tips mentioned in #16, see if you can get a default route inserted. If still no luck, maybe we could try something else..

 

[KevTech]

Best to use a pool server in your country/area and not just ntp.pool.org.

The list is on the right side of the website.

For the USA you want to use us.pool.ntp.org

 

[HardCat]

I ran into this issue this morning on my RT-AC87R router after upgrading the firmware to merlin's latest beta. It resolved immediately after I changed the DNS servers I had been using for a long time. Not sure why, but thought I would post here in case someone else encounters it.

 

[IrishTR]

I ran into this issue this morning on my RT-AC87R router after upgrading the firmware to merlin's latest beta. It resolved immediately after I changed the DNS servers I had been using for a long time. Not sure why, but thought I would post here in case someone else encounters it.

I have this exact problem with one of my RT-AC66U routers. I currently have 2 of these connected in my home, one as the primary and one as an AP (Wired) for complete wireless coverage over my home. The primary router connected to my modem simply will not get the time sync'd, I have to manual set it and then come reboot time it resorts back to Jul 30, 2015 for some reason. This is happening on stock ASUS F/W and latest Merlin F/W no matter what. I've restored to defaults and everything with no joy. Best I can do is Telnet in and set via Date command. I have a default gateway configured on main router, I tried leaving DNS Server to default on ASUS and setting to Google DNS 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 but no luck. I can ping pool.ntp.org, us.pool.ntp.org and several others I have tried but it just won't take. Strange that the 2nd router that gets information from this bad router works just fine though.

Any ideas?