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 installing anything heavy and in a simple CLI command ?

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 X servers
• Output formats: human-readable or JSON - both shortable (-S)
• Verbose mode for advanced metadata
• Accepts both FQDN and raw IPv4/6 addresses
• Continuous diag with either infinite or static count
• Port specification

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 cp ./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.deb>

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

Compile sync feature

To enable rkik to apply queried time to your system, you must include sync feature to rkik's compilation

cargo build --release --features sync

Usage Examples

Output Examples

Human-readable:

Server: time.google.com
IP: 216.239.35.4:123
UTC Time: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 09:44:43 +0000
Local Time: 2025-09-03 11:44:43
Clock Offset: -6776478.958 ms
Round Trip Delay: 33.192 ms

JSON:

{
  "schema_version": 1,
  "run_ts": "2025-09-03T11:37:57.240321504+00:00",
  "results": [
    {
      "name": "time.google.com",
      "ip": "216.239.35.4",
      "port": 123,
      "offset_ms": -6774948.655983666,
      "rtt_ms": 46.76786344498396,
      "utc": "2025-09-03T09:45:02.291616786+00:00",
      "local": "2025-09-03 11:45:02",
      "timestamp": null
    }
  ]
}

Arguments supported

Rusty Klock Inspection Kit - NTP Query and Compare Tool

Usage: rkik [OPTIONS] [TARGET]

Arguments:
  [TARGET]  Positional server name or IP (can include port specification) - Examples: [time.google.com, [2001:4860:4860::8888]:123, 192.168.1.23:123]

Options:
  -s, --server <SERVER>                 Query a single NTP server (optional)
  -C, --compare <COMPARE> <COMPARE>...  Compare multiple servers
  -v, --verbose                         Show detailed output
  -f, --format <FORMAT>                 Output format: text or json [default: text] [possible values: text, json, simple, json-short]
  -j, --json                            Alias for JSON output
  -S, --short                           Alias for simple / short text output
  -p, --pretty                          Pretty-print JSON
      --no-color                        Disable colored output
  -6, --ipv6                            Use IPv6 resolution only
      --timeout <TIMEOUT>               Timeout in seconds [default: 5.0]
  -8, --infinite                        Infinite count mode
  -i, --interval <INTERVAL>             Interval between queries in seconds (only with --infinite or --count) [default: 1.0]
  -c, --count <COUNT>                   Specific count of requests [default: 1]
  -h, --help                            Print help
  -V, --version                         Print version

Example Use case

Sometimes, the monitoring system shows up with a ntp error on a server. You don't know if the problem comes from this server or its reference. Then you try rkik ntp.server.local -v

Server: ntp.server.local
IP: 192.168.1.123:123
UTC Time: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 13:06:15 +0000
Local Time: 2025-09-03 15:06:15
Clock Offset: 5000.145 ms
Round Trip Delay: 27.420 ms
Stratum: 2
Reference ID: 145.238.80.80

At this moment, we can assure there is an offset between our system and the distant server, we can also know which is the reference of that server. We will chick whether this reference has an offset with us or not with rkik 145.238.80.80

Server: 145.238.80.80
IP: 145.238.80.80:123
UTC Time: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 13:09:57 +0000
Local Time: 2025-09-03 15:09:57
Clock Offset: 5001.531 ms
Round Trip Delay: 8.804 ms

It does, we now can assure the problem is external to our server, we may now connect on the system to change its reference with another server.