ntpd configutration -- a small suggestion from the peanut gallery

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <11728008-40bb-4ff6-5a93-5ebf28ce4735 at hedeland.org>, 
Per Hedeland <per at hedeland.org> wrote:

>> Yes.  Here is the exact quote from the current man page for ntpd:
>> 
>>       -g, --panicgate
>>               Allow the first adjustment to be Big.  This option may appear 
>an
>>               unlimited number of times.
>> 
>>               Normally, ntpd exits with a message to the system log if the
>>                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>               offset exceeds the panic threshold, which is 1000 s by default
>.
>> 
>> So either I need new glasses or else that part underlined above is just plai
>n
>> wrong.  Because even after my ntpd died several times, I was unable to find
>> -any- message telling me that ntpd had chosen suicide, let alone what the
>> reasons for that might have been.  At least not in /var/log/messages.
>
>I know that the underlined part *used to* be correct, since I have
>seen those messages in the distant past (on FreeeBSD they would indeed
>be in /var/log/messages, but that is OS-dependant). I don't remember
>the exact wording though, and doing a quick test, I can confirm your
>observation - nothing at all is logged by the ntpd version included in
>FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE when it commits suicide due to the offset
>exceeding the panic threshold. So I guess the logging was lost at some
>point.

Thank you for confirming.  so I now know that I am not crazy... or at
least not *entirely* crazy. :-)

>https://bugs.ntp.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1130
>https://bugs.ntp.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2410
>
>Unfortunately the activity seen in those bug reports, including not
>even applying a provided patch, is probably typical for the
>maintenance of the "reference implementation" these days.

Well, there is the reference code, and then there is the FreeBSD version
thereof.  Anyway, I already filed FreeBSD a PR on this:

   https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=238352

I will now attach to that the links you provided also, and then just
hope for the best.


Regards,
rfg