FreeBSD 6.0-RC1 available
Joshua Coombs
jcoombs at gwi.net
Tue Oct 11 10:45:54 PDT 2005
"Scott Long" <scottl at samsco.org> wrote in message
news:434BEC96.4050801 at samsco.org...
> Joshua Coombs wrote:
>
>> Given that we're in the RC stage, is it too late to get a PR
>> stuffed in to correct ntpd/ntpdate behavior in /etc/rc.d?
>>
>> Joshua Coombs
>>
>
> Depends on the kind of problem that you are seeing. Any details?
>
> Scott
Two issues I spotted.
First, ntpdate is still being used, despite it being marked as
depreciated for quite some time. The preferred replacement is to call
ntpd with the -q switch. This causes ntpd to match ntpdate's
behavior, it sets the time, and then exits with a status code
indicating success or failure.
Second, when ntpdate, or what ever is set in ntpdate_program is
called, there is an IP appended to the end of the arguments, which is
not controlled by ntpdate_flags. This means you cannot setup ntpd -q
to be used in place of ntpdate without editing the ntpdate rc.d script
or creating a new one, a regression from 4.x's setup.
I see some effort was put into the new ntpdate rc.d script, having it
pull potential servers from /etc/ntp.conf rather than require the user
specify one in rc.conf using ntpdate_flags. ntpd called with -q uses
the ntp.conf server entries automatically, so the extra work by the
rc.d script isn't required if we switch to ntpd -q in place of
ntpdate.
I was going to work up a tweaked ntpdate rc.d script that included a
new option, ntpdate_use_ntpd, that when set, would use the preferred
practice of calling ntpd -q after verifying a valid ntp.conf exists.
If one isn't present, I was going to have it throw a warning, and
reference an example conf using pool.ntp.org servers to get baseline
time established. The ntpd rc.d script would receive the same check,
the example conf would lock ntpd down such that it would only operate
as a client for the local machine, and not act as a server for
external hosts, or respond to external ntp query/command/conf
requests.
Unfortunately, I'm getting into this rather late, I just moved my 386
to 6.0b5 this weekend, hence my tardiness discovering ntpdate still in
use in later releases of FreeBSD. I would like to see the correct
behavior implemented for release, but if I'm beyond the deadline for
this level of change, I'll accept that and work on making it the norm
for 6.1.
Joshua Coombs
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