Linux ntpd sendto() Bad file descriptor error and solution

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Q. I’m using Red hat Enterprise Linux server. I’m getting following error in /var/log/message file:

Apr 16 16:38:02 server ntpd[22694]: sendto(10.0.77.54): Bad file descriptor
Apr 16 16:38:08 server ntpd[22694]: sendto(66.111.46.200): Bad file descriptor
Apr 16 16:38:25 server ntpd[22694]: sendto(83.133.111.7): Bad file descriptor
Apr 16 16:38:28 server ntpd[22694]: sendto(81.169.156.100): Bad file descriptor

How do I fix above errors?

A. If you are seeing Bad file descriptor errors in /var/log/messages, make sure that only one instance of ntpd is running.

Step #1: Stop ntpd

Type the following command to stop ntpd:
# /etc/init.d/ntpd stop

Step #2: kill ntpd

Type the following command to kill all instance of ntpd:
# killall ntpd

Step #3: Start ntpd

# /etc/init.d/ntpd start

Step #4: Watch log file /var/log/messages

Use tail command:
# tail -f /var/log/messages
Output:

Apr 16 16:44:35 server ntpd[17549]: Listening on interface lo, 127.0.0.1#123
Apr 16 16:44:35 server ntpd[17549]: Listening on interface eth0, 10.5.123.2#123
Apr 16 16:44:35 server ntpd[17549]: Listening on interface eth1, 71.26.1.25#123
Apr 16 16:44:35 server ntpd[17549]: kernel time sync status 0040
Apr 16 16:44:36 server ntpd[17549]: frequency initialized -58.648 PPM from /var/lib/ntp/drift
Apr 16 16:47:52 server ntpd[17549]: synchronized to LOCAL(0), stratum 10
Apr 16 16:47:52 server ntpd[17549]: kernel time sync disabled 0041
Apr 16 16:47:52 server ntpd[17549]: synchronized to 71.26.2.221, stratum 1
Apr 16 16:50:00 server ntpd[17549]: synchronized to 10.0.77.54, stratum

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

3 comment

    1. Negative, that may be system dependent, but on every variant I have personally worked on it is ALWAYS “ntpd” not “ntp” since its a daemon. (Just like the apache webserver is httpd not http, and mysqld not mysql, etc etc)

      P.S. thanks for the Answer, I had the same problem and it didn’t occur to me to look if a second process was running after I had done a “/sbin/service ntpd stop” :)

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