RKIK - Rusty Klock Inspection Kit

Most systems rely on a daemon (like chronyd or ntpd) to synchronize time. But what if you just want to inspect the current offset between your system clock and one or more NTP servers — without root, without sync, and without installing anything heavy?

RKIK is a Rust-based CLI tool designed for stateless and passive NTP inspection, just as dig or ping are for DNS and ICMP.

Link to Documentation page

Features

Query any NTP server (IPv4 or IPv6)
Compare offsets between two servers
Output formats: human-readable or JSON
Verbose mode for advanced metadata
Accepts both FQDN and raw IP addresses
Argument parsing via clap with fallback positional support

Installation

Linux

# Download rkik-linux-x86_64.tar.gz on https://github.com/aguacero7/rkik/releases/latest
tar xvfz rkik-linux-x86_64.tar.gz 
cd rkik-linux-x86_64/
sudo mv ./rkik /usr/local/bin

Red-hat Like Systems (CentOS, Fedora, RHEL, Alma,..)

# Download rkik-<X.Y.Z-R>.x86_64.rpm  on https://github.com/aguacero7/rkik/releases/latest
rpm -U <rkik-<X.Y.Z-R>.x86_64.rpm>
# OR
dnf install <rkik-<X.Y.Z-R>.x86_64.rpm>
# OR
yum install <rkik-<X.Y.Z-R>.x86_64.rpm>

Debian-like Systems

# Download rkik-<X.Y.Z-R>.x86_64.deb  on https://github.com/aguacero7/rkik/releases/latest
apt install <rkik-<X.Y.Z-R>.x86_64.rpm>

Cargo

cargo install rkik

From Source :

git clone <repository-url>
cd rkik
cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/rkik /usr/local/bin
rkik --help

🧪 Usage Examples

Command	Description
`rkik pool.ntp.org`	Query an NTP server (positional)
`rkik pool.ntp.org -6`	Query an NTP server using IPv6 (positional)
`rkik --server pool.ntp.org`	Same as above, explicit flag
`rkik --server time.google.com --verbose`	Verbose query output
`rkik --server time.cloudflare.com --format json`	JSON output for a single server
`rkik --compare pool.ntp.org time.google.com`	Compare two servers
`rkik -C ntp1 ntp2 --format json`	Compare servers with JSON output

📦 Output Examples

Human-readable:

Server: time.google.com
IP: 216.239.35.0
UTC Time: Mon, 27 May 2024 13:45:00 +0000
Local Time: 2024-05-27 15:45:00
Clock Offset: -1.203 ms
Round Trip Delay: 2.320 ms

JSON:

{
  "server": "time.google.com",
  "ip": "216.239.35.0",
  "utc_time": "2024-05-27T13:45:00Z",
  "local_time": "2024-05-27 15:45:00",
  "offset_ms": -1.203,
  "rtt_ms": 2.320,
  "stratum": 1,
  "reference_id": "GOOG"
}

Documentation

See the docs directory for the full user and developer guides.

rkik 0.6.0