Show HN: RKIK v0.6.0 – A stateless NTP inspection CLI (Rust, async, no root)
I've just released version 0.6.0 of RKIK (Rusty Klock Inspection Kit), a command-line tool for inspecting NTP servers. It's designed for passive, read-only analysis of NTP offset and delay — much like `dig` is to DNS or `ping` is to ICMP.
Why?
In environments where you can't or don't want to run `chronyd`, `ntpd`, or `ntpdate` (e.g. containers, sandboxes, CI), there's no lightweight way to check if your system is drifting from trusted NTP servers.
RKIK fills that gap: - Query one or more NTP servers - Compare offsets between multiple servers asynchronously (thanks to Tokio) - Output in JSON or readable text - Works with both IPv4 and IPv6 - No root, no sync, no config, no daemon - Written in Rust, single binary (~2MB)
Example usage:
rkik pool.ntp.org
rkik --compare time.google.com time.cloudflare.com
rkik -C ntp1 ntp2 ntp3 --format json
Example output: Server: time.google.com
Offset: -1.203 ms
RTT: 2.320 ms
RefID: GOOG
Stratum: 1
Why Rust?It compiles to a small static binary, has great async support via Tokio, and excellent libraries for terminal UI and NTP packet decoding.
Repo: https://github.com/aguacero7/rkik
Crates.io: https://crates.io/crates/rkik
Docs: https://aguacero7.github.io/rkik
Happy to hear feedback — especially if you're working with time drift, embedded systems, or observability pipelines.
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