Thanks to black friday deals I've recently added a 50'' television for my Hubitat Dashboard display. I'm using my Qnap Nas HDMI port to the TV, and using Firefox browser within Qnap to access my hub IP.
The problem I'm having is my Dashboard Via Firefox Via Qnap has a NTP time drift of about a full minute within a 24 hour timespan. I can verify on other devices the Hub itself is not drifting as well as my POE camera monitor is also staying correct. The only drift is happening within the Qnap. I'm new to the Qnap world so advice here is needed, I have Qnaps NTP server active and I'm running Merlin firmware on my Asus router which should have it's own NTP server.
Why would you need more then one NTP server on your network? Point ASUS as I assume it connected to the internet, to internet time server, for example nist.time.gov and let is serve all your network devices.
Never mentioned I need more than one, I stated what I have and what is not working, and the attempts for what knowledge I have to try (turning on qnaps ntp server) which still is not fixing the problem, hence the post.
The Merlin firmware on the Asus router to my knowledge operates it's own independent NTP server and is supposed to force all the devices connected through it to use it's NTP server. That is not apparently happening with the Qnap
If you have secure network and don't want all your device go to the internet to get time, use Asus as NTP server for your network, I believe Merlin have predefined internet time serves to sync with. If not, point NTP on ASUS to time.nist.gov, on all you other device use IP of your Asus router for "internet time server"
For example see screenshot from my windows machine.
PC is getting time from the internet. To make it get time from NTP server on the LAN , you would need enter IP of internal NTP server, in your case that would be IP of your Asus router. Same for Qnap. At least one device on the network should be getting time from the internet. Internal Clocks on any consumer device will drift over time, more or less.
Your assumption is incorrect. There is no forcing any device to get time from specific time server. You need to tell a device to sync time with time server you want, if you want. If you don't do that, device will use internal clock.
Ya I'm not concerned with a PC or any other devices on my network as they are syncing time with the router just fine. It's solely the Qnap Nas that s drifting. I need specifics to correct the Qnaps problem.
One question may be how it does the forcing. If it supplies the address of the time server as part of a DHCP assignment, it may be ignored. If it intercepts all traffic outbound on the ntp port, that "should" be effective.
That is my interpretation of how it operates, I installed the merlin firmware because of the previous NTP syncing issues hubitat had, and to prevent the hub from accessing outside sources for NTP.
I would be more concerned that the NAS is "drifting" a full minute every day. That doesn't seem right to me. Are you sure that is in fact the NAS itself that is drifting or is it only the webpage that you have open to the dashboard all day? I would suspect it's just the page displayed in the browser and not the NAS's operating system. If it is truly off by that much after a day, that means it would be off by over 6 hours after a year. Computers are supposed to be more accurate time keepers than that.
My understanding, is that if you enable the ASUS Merlin firmware feature, intercepts all NTP requests and handles them locally via its built-in time server. Of course, the ASUS router syncs its time via the internet.
But again, you are not looking at the NAS directly. You are accessing it over a webpage. When you open the webpage, the clock is not constantly updated from the NAS. A clock element is added to your browser that runs on it's own. I would close the page, open it again and see if it's still off.
If the method (webpage as you refer it) of accessing it was in anyway the issue then that would be reflective in other devices (such as hubitat) which is accessed directly via the IP address, which it is not.
I would try setting your ASUS router as the NTP server and see if that takes care of the issue.
In regard to what @Ryan780 is saying, yes the admin website could fool you in showing you an incorrect time due to an issue with the website and not the time of the NAS itself. You can easily test that by closing the admin website and open it up again. If the time is still wrong than the website is not the issue and I would still try to configure a common NTP server with the instructions above
