after revisiting the longest-thread-of-the-millennium again, i thought i'd be a good citizen and get ntpd going instead of ntpdate.
# apt-get update <snip> Fetched 257kB in 4s (62.2kB/s) Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done root: /mnt# apt-get install ntpd Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done Package ntpd has no available version, but exists in the database. This typically means that the package was mentioned in a dependency and never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not available with the contents of sources.list E: Package ntpd has no installation candidate root: /mnt# apt-cache show ntpd root: /mnt# odd! (suggestions welcome.) -- I use Debian/GNU Linux version 3.0; Linux server 2.4.20-k6 #1 Mon Jan 13 23:49:14 EST 2003 i586 unknown DEBIAN NEWBIE TIP #11 from Will Trillich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> : Which COMMANDS pertain to <xyz>? Try "apropos <xyz>", "info <xyz>", and "man -k <xyz>". Also see http://newbieDoc.sourceForge.net/ ... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]