The ptp4l program tries to use hardware time stamping by default. To use ptp4l with hardware time stamping capable drivers and NICs, you must provide the network interface to use with the -i option. Enter the following command as root:

~]# ptp4l -i em3 -m

Where em3 is the interface you wish to configure. Below is example output from ptp4l when the PTP clock on the NIC is synchronized to a master:

~]# ptp4l -i em3 -m
selected em3 as PTP clock
port 1: INITIALIZING to LISTENING on INITIALIZE
port 0: INITIALIZING to LISTENING on INITIALIZE
port 1: new foreign master 00a069.fffe.0b552d-1
selected best master clock 00a069.fffe.0b552d
port 1: LISTENING to UNCALIBRATED on RS_SLAVE
master offset -23947 s0 freq +0 path delay       11350
master offset -28867 s0 freq +0 path delay       11236
master offset -32801 s0 freq +0 path delay       10841
master offset -37203 s1 freq +0 path delay       10583
master offset  -7275 s2 freq -30575 path delay   10583
port 1: UNCALIBRATED to SLAVE on MASTER_CLOCK_SELECTED
master offset  -4552 s2 freq -30035 path delay   10385

The master offset value is the measured offset from the master in nanoseconds. The s0, s1, s2 strings indicate the different clock servo states: s0 is unlocked, s1 is clock step and s2 is locked. Once the servo is in the locked state (s2), the clock will not be stepped (only slowly adjusted) unless the pi_offset_const option is set to a positive value in the configuration file (described in the ptp4l(8) man page). The adj value is the frequency adjustment of the clock in parts per billion (ppb). The path delay value is the estimated delay of the synchronization messages sent from the master in nanoseconds. Port 0 is a Unix domain socket used for local PTP management. Port 1 is the em3 interface (based on the example above.) INITIALIZING, LISTENING, UNCALIBRATED and SLAVE are some of possible port states which change on the INITIALIZE, RS_SLAVE, MASTER_CLOCK_SELECTED events. In the last state change message, the port state changed from UNCALIBRATED to SLAVE indicating successful synchronization with a PTP master clock.

The ptp4l program can also be started as a service by running:

~]# systemctl start ptp4l

When running as a service, options are specified in the /etc/sysconfig/ptp4l file. More information on the different ptp4l options and the configuration file settings can be found in the ptp4l(8) man page.

By default, messages are sent to /var/log/messages. However, specifying the -m option enables logging to standard output which can be useful for debugging purposes.

To enable software time stamping, the -S option needs to be used as follows:

~]# ptp4l -i em3 -m -S