I want the asterisk to do i time sync with an online time server. Is this possible?
Funny you should ask, because this is probably one of those things that ought to be standardized, but isn’t. On our system, I found a directory called etc/ntp/ntpservers, which contains a short list of timeservers (clock.redhat.com and clock2.redhat.com). There are also a couple of other files in that directory (keys and step-tickers).
If you have Webmin installed, it looks like there are actually two ways to enable the time server. The first is to go to System | Bootup and Shutdown and then make sure that ntpd is set to start at boot. This uses whatever servers are defined in the aforementioned etc/ntp/ntpservers file (if you’re not running CentOS or RedHat then you’ll probably want to use one of the “pool” ntp servers). I think this also allows your Asterisk box to act as a local time server for the other machines on your network, but don’t hold me to that.
The other way in Webmin is to go to Hardware | System Time and fill in the blanks in the Time server section and enable that. I would not do it both ways. On our system the first method is the one used and it seems to be working fine, so I’m not going to mess with it. But I would imagine that either way would work.
Sorry I’m not enough of a Linux geek to give you an answer that doesn’t involve using Webmin, but if you’re asking a question like this you probably want Webmin anyway - it makes system administration tasks a whole lot easier!