Note: This article was originally published in 2019. Some steps, commands, or software versions may have changed. Check the current NTP documentation for the latest information.
As I was working on setting up an NTP Server for our local network, I wanted to make sure it was set up properly and working. To do so, I looked up for a way to do a simple thing like run a command con the cli and get information back. On windows you can use W32Time so this time I am going to cover how to do it on a linux/ubuntu client.
Using ntpdate you can easily query an NTP server like so (you might need to first install it using sudo apt install ntpsec-ntpdate):
$ ntpdate -q pool.ntp.org
2019-12-16 21:57:34.6713 (+0000) +0.031568 +/- 0.103280 pool.ntp.org 84.245.9.254 s1 no-leap
Make sure you use the -q switch which makes sure it only queries the time server (but makes no changes to your local system).