[ntp:hackers] NTPv4 Brian Version

Brian Utterback Brian.Utterback at Sun.COM
Thu Aug 11 01:31:40 UTC 2005


Danny Mayer wrote:
> David L. Mills wrote:
> 
>> Folks,
>>
>> For some reason the pool is giving attitude. The resolver returns the 
>> same server every time asked. The nslookup and dig utilities in 
>> Solaris apparently return the right stuff, but the ntpd resolver seems 
>> stuck. None of the region zones work except us and asia. It would be 
>> nice that, by direction, the entire list returned in one query would 
>> be lit up rather than callinb many times.
>>
>> Dave
> 
> 
> Dave, the reason that dig and nslookup give you different answers than 
> the ntpd calls is that dig and nslookup are BIND utilities and they only 
> ask the DNS for answers, they never check anywhere else. The resolver 
> that the box uses can check in all sorts of places including the ncsd or 
> whatever. dig, host and nslookup can only tell you what the answer 
> should be not what your application is seeing.
> 
> I'd rather ntpd bypass that nonsense though vendors may disagree.
> 

I suppose that being a vendor, I will have to disagree. Strenuously.
DNS is only one of many possible naming services. To bypass the
configured naming service and use DNS instead is very ill-advised at 
best and in many environments, simply will not work. Of the many systems
I use, exactly one even has a resolv.conf file.

Brian Utterback


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