Comment 51 for bug 114505

It is illuminating to look at syslog in an editor/viewer just after a boot and search for 'ntp.' That will show you the ntpd and ntpdate calls--easily showing if multiple attempts are happening. You can also see if ntpd is making associations, look to see if interfaces are up, if dhcp addresses have been assigned before ntp is trying to start, and if ntpdate ran before ntpd.

Also, I have thought that the fix for this should also add the 'write to hardware switch' to ntpdate IF AND ONLY IF ntpdate is successful. This will avoid the rare but possible case of the machine clock being more than 1000 secs wrong from actual, causing ntpd to go silent without notification (other than logging).