For a network that is never connected to the Internet, one computer is selected to be the master timeserver. The other computers are either direct clients of the master, or clients of clients. On the master, the drift file must be manually set with the average rate of drift of the system clock. If the master is rebooted it will obtain the time from surrounding systems and take an average to set its system clock. Thereafter it resumes applying adjustments based on the drift file. The drift file will be updated automatically when the settime command is used.

On the system selected to be the master, using a text editor running as root, edit the /etc/chrony.conf as follows:

driftfile /var/lib/chrony/drift
commandkey 1
keyfile /etc/chrony.keys
initstepslew 10 client1 client3 client6
local stratum 8
manual
allow 192.0.2.0

Where 192.0.2.0 is the network or subnet address from which the clients are allowed to connect.

On the systems selected to be direct clients of the master, using a text editor running as root, edit the /etc/chrony.conf as follows:

server master
driftfile /var/lib/chrony/drift
logdir /var/log/chrony
log measurements statistics tracking
keyfile /etc/chrony.keys
commandkey 24
local stratum 10
initstepslew 20 master
allow 192.0.2.123

Where 192.0.2.123 is the address of the master, and master is the host name of the master. Clients with this configuration will resynchronize the master if it restarts.

On the client systems which are not to be direct clients of the master, the /etc/chrony.conf file should be the same except that the local and allow directives should be omitted.