Time servers

J

jabuzzard

Member
Proxmox Subscriber
Sep 7, 2025
39
8
8
Am I missing something, or is there no way to set NTP servers for timesync in the web interface? From what I can make out, poking around, PVE is using chrony, which is configured to use the Debian vendor pool. I really don't want my virtualisation servers to be poking random stuff on the internet, and would much rather configure Proxmox to use our organisation's internal tier 1 NTP servers.

Aside from manually editing /etc/chrony/chrony.conf with the risk it is overwritten in the future on upgrades, what are my options?
 
I think PVE support several standard Linux/Debian packages for this and it's not managed by Proxmox. The manual suggests manually editing the default chrony configuration: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_time_synchronization . I don't expect configuration files to be overwritten by Proxmox or Debian updates. If the default configuration does change a lot (which is unlikely), the Debian upgrade process allows you to see the differences and allows you to change or combine it however you want.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kingneutron, Johannes S and Markku
One way to prefer the internal NTP servers and still not modify chrony.conf is to add a new file in /etc/chrony/sources.d directory, like internal.sources:

Code: 
server x.y.z iburst prefer
server a.b.c iburst prefer

Note that this does not remove the "poking around" but ensures (I think) that the internal servers are preferred anyway.

But, as said, the package upgrade process does not overwrite chrony.conf but provides you the option to check before deciding, if you have changed it.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Johannes S and leesteken
That's all a bit DIY to put it politely. Note that one still has to edit /etc/chrony/chrony.conf if one wants to stop it from even talking to servers on the internet. I am really quite surprised that the web GUI has a "Time" option for the servers, but only allows me to set the time zone.

I would note that a real Debian install would have picked up the internal time servers and time zone from DHCP during install and used them...
 
  • Like
Reactions: leesteken
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back