Unexpected origin timestamp" messages reported by NTP resulting in communication failure

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 4 (SLES 11 SP4)

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 (SLES 12)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 1 (SLES 12 SP1)

Situation

Having peer servers configured as part of the NTP configuration, the following messages are logged in "/var/log/ntp":

ntpd[xxxx] receive: Unexpected origin timestamp xxxxx.xxxxx does not match aorg 00000.00000 from xx

Where xx at the end of the message is the IP address of the configured peer server, eventually this results in communication failure between the configured servers.

Resolution

Update to the latest version of NTP, which at the time of writing for SLES12 SP1 is version "ntp-4.2.8p7-11.1".

Cause

This was caused by changes made to bogus packet detection of NTP. Although the messages are still logged with the current latest NTP version, communication is not lost anymore and the messages can be ignored.

Additional Information

Also see: http://bugs.ntp.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2952

Disclaimer

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