well, ntp is running (now). There was no drift file, so I have 
created that with 1000. We'll see how it goes from there.

and on my other questions, re-installing syssrc seems to have 
worked: I built and installed a new kernel, rebooted and all seems 
well.

der Mouse wrote:

> Well, as you point out, ntp has to be running.  But aside from that, if
> the clock drifts badly enough, ntp won't be able to achieve lock; the
> best it'll be able to do is keep stepping the clock.  I've found that
> killing ntp, putting a large number (1000, 2000) in the drift file
> manually, then restarting ntp can get ntp to sync up even with high
> hardware drift.  (Once it locks on, it'll generally stay that way, and
> after a while it'll rewrite the drift file with a more accurate value.)
> 
> 10 minutes a day is .42- seconds a minute.  That's high enough that I
> wouldn't be a bit surprised if ntp had trouble with it.	 Try putting
> 1000 in your drift file manually (I think positive numbers correspond
> to the clock losing time).  Also try watching ntp's numbers to see how
> it's doing....