[ntp:questions] 4.2.4p8 -> 4.2.6p5 less frequent driftfile updates?

Jochen Bern Jochen.Bern at LINworks.de
Wed Dec 18 18:05:25 UTC 2013


Hello everyone,

about 40h ago, I updated half a platform from CentOS 6.4 to 6.5, which
includes updating ntpd from ntp-4.2.4p8-3.el6.centos.x86_64 to
ntp-4.2.6p5-1.el6.centos.x86_64. One of the updated machines holds the
platform's Internet-bound NTP connections, and has some extra monitoring
for that - which now alerts us to the fact that by now, the driftfile
gets updated only every 6+ hours, rather than every hour (modulo sync
problems) as before.

A quick scan seems to confirm that the update frequency is tied to the
ntpd version running on the machines:

> $ date ; for MACHINE in $INTERNETFACING ; do echo "" ; ssh $MACHINE \
> > "rpm -q ntp ; ls -l /var/lib/ntp/drift" 2>/dev/null ; done
> Mi 18. Dez 19:03:06 CET 2013
> 
> ntp-4.2.6p5-1.el6.centos.x86_64
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ntp ntp 7 18. Dez 15:18 /var/lib/ntp/drift
> 
> ntp-4.2.6p5-1.el6.centos.x86_64
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ntp ntp 7 18. Dez 18:20 /var/lib/ntp/drift
> 
> ntp-4.2.4p8-3.el6.centos.x86_64
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ntp ntp 7 18. Dez 18:11 /var/lib/ntp/drift
> 
> ntp-4.2.4p8-3.el6.centos.x86_64
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ntp ntp 7 18. Dez 18:29 /var/lib/ntp/drift
> 
> ntp-4.2.4p8-3.el6.centos.x86_64
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ntp ntp 7 18. Dez 18:21 /var/lib/ntp/drift
> 
> ntp-4.2.6p5-1.el6.centos.x86_64
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ntp ntp 7 18. Dez 14:13 /var/lib/ntp/drift
> 
> ntp-4.2.6p5-1.el6.centos.x86_64
> -rw-r--r--. 1 ntp ntp 7 18. Dez 13:22 /var/lib/ntp/drift

Is this change of behavior intentional?

Kind regards,
								J. Bern
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