Linuxptp (ptp4l) announce timeout / using local clock as best master

I haven’t been able to get ptp4l to work for some time. I cannot aquire what is referred to a foreign master server. I stepped up all of the timeout options and now it just slowly loops to

announce timeout

Eventually it still picks local clock as master, which is not as useful, but I guess I could probably still use it to keep itself accurate. I wonder how it will do that and what reference it would use or would the program keep data on the drift amd how. The packets show in wireshark going to igmp.mcast.net but I still get timeouts with half minute or more timeout settings.

I am interested in this because it looks like it uses the Etherner hardware clock which may be more accurate and can change the speed. So when not syncing, the time kept is quite reliable and even less necessity of re-syncing with remote clocks.