[ntp:questions] Re: ntpd, boot time, and hot plugging

Per Hedeland per at hedeland.org
Fri Feb 4 23:34:34 UTC 2005


In article <cu0tn7$jmh$1 at dewey.udel.edu> "David L. Mills"
<mills at udel.edu> writes:
>
>Well, I found the step routine call; however, that code has grown so 
>weedy with intricate evil little OS-dependencies that I find it 
>unreadable. I haven't touched the ntpdate code since it first appeared 
>probably fifteen years ago. So far as I can see, if somebody opts out 
>the step correction, ntpdate can leave a big offset for later ntpd to 
>chew on.

Yes, and along these lines are the reasons for dropping ntpdate that you
have given in the past:

a) It's hideously complex
b) It does something that is similar to / a subset of what ntpd does (or
   rather what it did many years ago), but not the same, which together
   with a) makes it a pain to maintain
c) It's feature set gives the impression that it might be reasonable to
   use *instead* of ntpd (e.g. running hourly from cron) - there's no
   point having the slew modes otherwise
d) If widely used as in c), it's quite unfriendly to servers, when
   gazillions of boxes send their 4 packets * N servers exactly on the
   hour.

FWIW, I find them perfectly valid - I'm just still not quite happy with
the replacement.:-)

If your latest ntpd tweak knobs can really achieve the low-quality-but-
really-quick time setting that ntpdate provides, *and* the combination
of knob settings needed for that is codified into another ntpd option
(--impatient maybe?:-), I think ntpdate can finally be laid to rest.
Requiring a separate config file just for this boot-time setting, with
parameters and values that are even more esoteric to the average user,
is really a show stopper IMHO.

--Per Hedeland
per at hedeland.org



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