Notes for installing chrony on macOS Author: Bryan Christianson (bryan@whatroute.net) ------------------------------------------------ These files are for those admins/users who would prefer to install chrony from the source distribution and are intended as guidelines rather than being definitive. They can be edited with a plain text editor, such as vi, emacs or your favourite IDE (Xcode) It is assumed you are comfortable with installing software from the terminal command line and know how to use sudo to acquire root access. If you are not familiar with the macOS command line then please consider using ChronyControl from http://whatroute.net/chronycontrol.html ChronyControl provides a gui wrapper for installing these files and sets the necessary permissions on each file. Install the chrony software --------------------------- You will need xcode and the commandline additions to build and install chrony. These can be obtained from Apple's website via the App Store. cd to the chrony directory ./configure make sudo make install chrony is now installed in default locations (/usr/local/sbin/chronyd, /usr/local/bin/chronyc) Create a chrony.conf file - see the chrony website for details The support files here assume the following directives are specified in the chrony.conf file keyfile /etc/chrony.d/chrony.keys driftfile /var/db/chrony/chrony.drift bindcmdaddress /var/db/chrony/chronyd.sock logdir /var/log/chrony dumpdir /var/db/chrony Install this file as /etc/chrony.d/chrony.conf and create the directories specified in the above directives if they don't exist. You will need root permissions to create the directories. Running chronyd --------------- At this point chronyd *could* be run as a daemon. Apple discourage running daemons and their preferred method uses the launchd facility. The support files here provide a launchd configuration file for chronyd and also a shell script and launchd configuration file to rotate the chronyd logs on a daily basis. Support files ------------- Dates and sizes may differ -rw-r--r-- 1 yourname staff 2084 4 Aug 22:54 README.txt -rwxr-xr-x 1 yourname staff 676 4 Aug 21:18 chronylogrotate.sh -rw-r--r-- 1 yourname staff 543 18 Jul 20:10 org.chrony-project.chronyc.plist -rw-r--r-- 1 yourname staff 511 19 Jun 18:30 org.chrony-project.chronyd.plist If you have used chrony support directories other than those suggested, you will need to edit each file and make the appropriate changes. Installing the support files ---------------------------- 1. chronylogrotate.sh This is a simple shell script that deletes old log files. Unfortunately because of the need to run chronyc, the standard macOS logrotation does not work with chrony logs. This script runs on a daily basis under control of launchd and should be installed in the /usr/local/bin directory sudo cp chronylogrotate.sh /usr/local/bin sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/chronylogrotate.sh sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/bin/chronylogrotate.sh 2. org.chrony-project.chronyc.plist This file is the launchd plist that runs logrotation each day. You may wish to edit this file to change the time of day at which the rotation will run, currently 04:05 am sudo cp org.chrony-project.chronyc.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.chrony-project.chronyc.plist sudo chmod 0644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.chrony-project.chronyc.plist sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.chrony-project.chronyc.plist 3. org.chrony-project.chronyd.plist This file is the launchd plist that runs chronyd when the Macintosh starts. sudo cp org.chrony-project.chronyd.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.chrony-project.chronyd.plist sudo chmod 0644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.chrony-project.chronyd.plist sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.chrony-project.chronyd.plist