CRS-2409:The clock on host is not synchronous with the mean cluster time

SYMPTOMS

CTSSD runs in observer mode even though no time sync software is running.

or

Cluvfy comp clocksync fails with:

or

The clusterware alert log reports errors like:

Note you could also see the CRS-2409 error if you have a vendor time synchronization service running but the times are sync'd yet.

CAUSE

NTP or some other time sync service is configured but not running.  The install, CVU, and CTSSD check for the following :

• There is only one and only one time synchronization service running at a time.
• The time sync service can be a vendor service (NTP, Windows Time Service, etc...) or CTSS.
• If vendor time service is configured, it needs to be correctly configured AND active.
• For CTSS to be in active mode, a vendor time service must not be running, and must not be configured (correctly or otherwise). This is important. CTSS is conservative and will switch to OBSERVER mode the moment it discovers that a vendor service is running or configured on even one node in the cluster. This is to prevent multiple active time sync services running on the cluster, potentially changing clocks.

SOLUTION

1) If you choose to use a vendor time sync service (like ntp), make sure it is configured AND running.

or

2) If you choose to let CTSSD handle time synchronization, de-configure the vendor time sync service.  For example, for NTP you may need to move or remove /etc/ntp.conf or /etc/xntp.conf.

After choosing option 2 (and removing /etc/ntp.conf in my case), I now see a good time status reported by cluvfy: