ntpd configutration -- a small suggestion from the peanut gallery

[Per Hedeland]

On 2019-06-07 17:47, Karl Denninger wrote:
> 
> On 6/7/2019 10:36 AM, RW via freebsd-questions wrote:
>> On Fri, 07 Jun 2019 10:57:01 +0200
>> Dave Cottlehuber wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 6 Jun 2019, at 18:14, RW via freebsd-questions wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 08:40:51 +0200 (CEST)
>>>> Trond Endrestøl wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 23:18-0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>>>>>> I feel sure that I'll be able to figure out how to get ntpd
>>>>>> properly enabled & configured, but I would just like to offer,
>>>>>> hunbly, to the Powers That Be, that it would be Nice if ntpd,
>>>>>> once enabled during install, just worked, you know, right outta
>>>>>> the box.
>>>>> Adding
>>>>>
>>>>> ntpd_sync_on_start="YES"
>>>>>
>>>>> to /etc/rc.conf is one way.
>>>> Perhaps it should be the default.
>>> It is in CURRENT[1] & would be worth MFC although possibly too late
>>> for 11.3R.
>> That affects the istaller, but it's still off in defaults/rc.conf.

The installer obviously creates the initial /etc/rc.conf, and AFAIU, the
change referenced earlier in the thread provides an option for the
installer to add 'ntpdate_enable="YES"' (*not* 'ntpd_sync_on_start="YES"')
to that rc.conf. Seems 100% good to me. The default for both parameters
remains "NO" in defaults/rc.conf AFAIK, which is as it should be IMHO -
unconditionally subjecting all users to inverted default values in
defaults/rc.conf without an *extremely* strong motivation is not the
FreeBSD way, I think.

> Losing a way to synchronously (with a reasonable timeout) set the time on boot is IMHO a nasty reversion and will bite people hard. There are plenty of things that react VERY poorly to the time going 
> backward; Dovecot is one of the more-popular ones (it EXITS if that happens!) so this sort of change IMHO needs careful consideration or a cold reboot of a server is likely to lead to services that do 
> not come back up.

While I agree 100% with what you say here, I don't understand what you are
referring to - I am not aware of anyone suggesting or any change amounting
to "Losing a way ...".

--Per