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YuruC3 a148392e70 my shitty notes I've asked AI to clean up and reorder so that they are readable

It is just work in progress so I don't really car

2026-09-07 00:27:05 +02:00

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Prereqs

Here I assume that your NIC is called enp4s0d1

Then check if the client supports hardware-transmit and hardware-receive.

ethtool -T enp4s0d1

If the client does support these two, continue on

Prepare PTP configs

First, install the linuxptp package.

Then make sure that no other time synchronization services, like chrony or ntpd or systemd-timesynced, are running.

sudo systemctl stop ntpd 
sudo systemctl stop chrony 
sudo systemctl stop systemd-timesyncd 
sudo systemctl disable ntpd
sudo systemctl disable chrony 
sudo systemctl disable systemd-timesyncd

Create PTP config file

sudo vim /etc/linuxptp/ptp4l-client.conf

[global]
verbose                 1

# Hardware timestamping using the NIC PHC
time_stamping           hardware

# Must match your grandmaster
domainNumber            0
network_transport       UDPv4
delay_mechanism         E2E

# Force this machine to be a PTP client, never grandmaster
clientOnly              1

# Useful while tuning
summary_interval        1

# Repeat these square brackets for each interface
[enp4s0]

Make PTP persistent

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/ptp4l-client.service

[Unit]
Description=PTP client on enp4s0
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ptp4l -i enp4s0 -f /etc/linuxptp/ptp4l-client.conf -m
Restart=always
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/phc2sys-client.service

[Unit]
Description=Sync system clock from enp4s0 PHC
After=ptp4l-client.service
Requires=ptp4l-client.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/phc2sys -s enp4s0 -c CLOCK_REALTIME -w -m
Restart=always
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then reload daemon and activate both PTP client and phc2sys

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now ptp4l-client.service
sudo systemctl enable --now phc2sys-client.service

Verification

Verify if PTP and phc2sys works with these commands

journalctl -u ptp4l-client -f
journalctl -u phc2sys-client -f

and also verify the status of PTP with these commands

pmc -u -b 0 'GET PORT_DATA_SET'
pmc -u -b 0 'GET TIME_STATUS_NP'
pmc -u -b 0 'GET CURRENT_DATA_SET'

Boundary clock server

First, create a ptp4l-boundary-server.conf

sudo vim /etc/linuxptp/ptp4l-boundary-server.conf

[global]
time_stamping           hardware
domainNumber            0
network_transport       UDPv4
delay_mechanism         E2E
# boundary_clock_jbod     1

# Let BMCA decide:
# upstream-facing port should become SLAVE/client
# downstream-facing port should become MASTER/server
priority1               200
priority2               128

summary_interval        1

[eno1]
# toward RPi5 grandmaster

[ens1f0]
# toward Nexus

Here's systemd service configs for a boundary clock server

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/ptp4l-boundary-server.service

[Unit]
Description=PTP client on <NIC1>, <NIC2>
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ptp4l -i <NIC1> -i <NIC2> -f /etc/linuxptp/ptp4l-boundary-server.conf -m
Restart=always
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/phc2sys-boundary-server.service

[Unit]
Description=Sync system clock from enp4s0 PHC
After=ptp4l-boundary-server.service
Requires=ptp4l-boundary-server.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/phc2sys -a -rr -m
Restart=always
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target