[ntp:hackers] Bug hunting opportunities

Greg Dowd GDowd at symmetricom.com
Thu Oct 29 18:42:19 UTC 2009


How would this work?  I expect the pll runs closed loop and not setting
the clock would just send it to the rails and introduce all kinds of
wacky behavior in the daemon.  

-----Original Message-----
From: hackers-bounces+gdowd=symmetricom.com at lists.ntp.org
[mailto:hackers-bounces+gdowd=symmetricom.com at lists.ntp.org] On Behalf
Of Hal Murray
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 11:36 AM
To: Harlan Stenn
Cc: hackers at ntp.isc.org
Subject: Re: [ntp:hackers] Bug hunting opportunities


> I would be Thrilled if somebody would get a test suite going. 

Here is a possibly crazy thought...

Suppose we added a user mode switch to the command line.

The idea is to allow a as much testing as we can while the system is
still 
running a production version of ntpd.  The ntpd under test would run,
but not 
do anything to the system.  It could write log files and stuff in the
user's 
directory.

I think it's only a few lines of code in several places.
  One is listening on a non-standard port number.
  Another is not actually setting the time.
  We should probably not clutter up syslog.
  Bypass the check for being root.
  Changing the default config file from /etc/ntp.conf to ./ntp.conf
would 
reduce errors.

Are there any others?

It might be handy if it wrote something to a log file any time it would
have 
called the system to adjust the time.  That log file might be handy for 
non-user debugging.

You would have to setup a special debugging ntp.conf.  It would put the
log 
files and drift file someplace where you could write.  With a bit of
work, 
this could even be merged into something like flock-build.

I think you could even test refclocks this way if you had one that
wasn't in 
use by the real system.



-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.



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