Using chrony for time synchronization

Some operating systems offer chronyd as an alternative to ntpd for network time synchronization. The OS package is called chrony and contains both the NTP server chronyd and the chronyc utilities.

If using chronyd for time synchronization at Kudu nodes, the rtcsync option must be enabled in chrony.conf. Without rtcsync, the local machine's clock will always be reported as unsynchronized and Kudu masters and tablet servers will not be able to start. The following code explains the observed behavior of chronyd when setting the synchronization status of the clock on Linux.