[ntp:questions] Re: Using NTPDC - keyid required

Jan Ceuleers janspam.ceuleers at computer.org
Mon Dec 8 17:52:25 UTC 2003


On Mon, 08 Dec 2003 01:01:06 GMT, Dale Worley
<worley at dragon.ariadne.com> wrote:

>Hmmm.  That can't be a limitation of the ntpdc protocol, as far as I
>know, because all those options are added to the associations via
>ntpdc packets.  The child process that looks up the server names talks
>to the main NTP process through packets using the ntpdc protocol, not
>through any special back channel.  (Which has the consequence that you
>have to allow 127.0.0.1 to modify NTP.)  So there's gotta be a way to
>specify those options.

Interesting. This raises two points.

As I said, I haven't looked at the source. But if ntpd uses the ntpdc
protocol during the start-up phase (and I don't doubt that that is the
case) then why does it not need a keyid/passwd pair for that? This
raises the possibility that ntpd might be convinced to dispense with
the keyid/passwd when it receives commands from ntpdc rather than from
another ntpd process?...

Secondly, perhaps it is not a limitation of the ntpdc protocol but
rather of the ntpdc program, which does not seem to implement the same
richness of options that the ntpd.conf parser offers. I'd still like
to try and hack ntpd to allow it to be used to modify the runtime
configuration of another running daemon, but I have no idea when I'll
have time to do this (and cannot guarantee that I'll succeed either).

Jan




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