We have a dozen or so Ultra 5s running Solaris 2.7. Unfortunately the
system clocks on several of the machines are fast or slow by almost
0.1% per day, which is too much for ntpd to handle. (Ntp is only
designed to handle clock frequencies off by at most 500 parts per
million, ours are off by several thousand parts per million.)

The ntp distribution comes with some instructions for fixing similar
problems on Ultra 5s running Solaris 2.5, but says nothing (that I can
find) about later versions of Solaris. In particular the fix involves
modifying the undocumented kernel variable "cpu_tick_freq" to an
amount consistent with the machines actual clock frequency. (See
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/ntp_spool/html/hints/solaris.xtra.patchfreq).

Does anyone know if this fix is also appropriate for later versions of
Solaris (in particular 2.7, and perhaps 2.8), or if there is some
other way to make our system clocks accurate enough for ntp to keep
them in sync?

Thank you,

-Matt Frank