Comment 1 for bug 20960

This works for me with ntpdate 1:4.2.0a+stable-8ubuntu1, which is the current
version in breezy. Which version of ntpdate do you have installed ?

Is there a firewall between your machine and the internet ? If so then
obviously you will have to make sure that it is not preventing the relevant packets.

If the problem persists, please provide the output of the following commands,
run as root:

sh -x /etc/init.d/ntpdate start

strace -tt /usr/sbin/ntpdate -b -s -u ntp.ubuntulinux.org