I've noticed that some embedded devices (such as OpenWRT, which runs on Busybox) use rdate to set the system time, instead of NTP. Rdate is an older time protocol, and I'm having trouble finding any working rdate servers in the United States.
Is it possible to for rdate to sync the time with NTP time servers?
My main Solaris server has an issue with its battery and thus I lose around 20 seconds per day.
Currently I am using rdate once in the morning to synchronise the time. Which approach should I use until I can change the battery on a weekend? Should I switch from rdate to ntp?
The machine runs plenty of cronjobs and thus I need to ensure that everything is started even when the time is changed.