Troubleshooting Time Synchronization Error: No PTP Interface Assigned

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to synchronize time on a VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0 Update host, the host reports the error: "No PTP interface assigned."

Concurrently, the Network Time Protocol (NTP) service may appear stuck in a passive "Monitoring" status, indicating that the time synchronization service is failing to synchronize with configured NTP servers.

 

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

The PTP daemon is currently enabled in the host configuration; however, it has not been assigned a network interface, or the assigned interface is not valid. The presence of a misconfigured PTP service conflicts with the standard NTP service, preventing the host from successfully synchronizing time.

From the below output from host, we can notice that both ntp and ptp services are enabled.

Resolution

To fix this, the PTP service must be completely disabled so that NTP can take over as the active kernel time provider.

 

You can apply this fix using the following commands in the ESXi CLI:

esxcli system ptp set -e false

esxcli system ntp set -e false

esxcli system ntp set -e true

/etc/init.d/ntpd restart

esxcli system ntp get