TL;DR Add this line to your /etc/dhcpcd.conf file: env NTP_CONF= Info about my system: I installed gentoo in 2022 and kept keeping my packages up to date. My current ntp version is: net-misc/ntp-4.2.8_p17 My current dhcpcd version is: net-misc/dhcpcd-10.0.3 My network is managed by a dhcp configuration of netifrc. The net-misc/ntp package of gentoo provides a default config file (/etc/ntp.conf ) that allows syncing the system clock to the Gentoo own ntp servers. The net-misc/dhcpcd package of gentoo provides a default config file (/etc/dhcpcd.conf) that is read by the dhcpcd service when it started. I didn't touch those config file, I always let them as they were and only applied required cfg-update -u. On my system, dhcpcd is started through netifrc: rc-service net.eno1 start Or : eselect rc start net.eno1 From there, whenever dhcpcd is started, it erase completly the content of the /etc/ntp.conf file. This totally prevents starting the ntpd service as well as using ntpd -q -g. Since /etc/ntp.conf was now blank, I tried to reinstall several times net-misc/ntp through those commands: emerge --ask --verbose net-misc/ntp emerge --ask --verbose --nomemconf net-misc/ntp but the /etc/ntp.conf file stayed blank and I wasn't prompted at all to run dispatch-conf or cfg-update -u. I had to run those command in order to fill /etc/ntp.conf file with the right content. rm /etc/ntp.conf emerge --ask --verbose net-misc/ntp Portage then prompted me to use cfg-update -u in order to update the config file. The next day, dhcpcd got restarted during boot and the /etc/ntp.conf file went blank again. In order to make sure dhcpcd was really the cause of the issue, I used this command : rc-service net.eno1 restart And then checked if /etc/ntp.conf became blank. I was finally able to prevent dhcpcd to deletes the /etc/ntp.conf file provided by gentoo by adding this line at the end of the /etc/dhcpcd.conf file. env NTP_CONF= This solved starting the ntpd service as well as using ntpd -q -g. That line should be added to the /etc/dhcpcd.conf file provided by net-misc/dhcpcd if Gentoo still wants to provide a default /etc/ntp.conf. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Restart your network connection and check if the content of /etc/ntp.conf gets deleted. Actual Results: The content of /etc/ntp.conf gets deleted whenever I restart my network connection. Expected Results: The content of /etc/ntp.conf should never get deleted by dhcpcd and should stay the one provided by net-misc/ntp. I sent a similar issue on GitHub: https://github.com/NetworkConfiguration/dhcpcd/issues/261
The script of dhcpcd that deletes /etc/ntp.conf is https://github.com/NetworkConfiguration/dhcpcd/blob/master/hooks/50-ntp.conf and probably also deletes the OpenNTPD and Chrony config files provided by Gentoo.
The way to disable features in dhcpcd is to edit /etc/conf.d/net and put entries like this in place: config_eth2="dhcp" modules_eth2="dhcpcd" dhcp_eth2="norelease nodns nontp nonis nogateway nosendhost"
