[ntp:questions] Should ntpd log failure to syslog?

Jan Ceuleers janspam.ceuleers at skynet.be
Fri Dec 12 08:25:44 UTC 2008


Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> Sorry, it's the "orthogonal" part that's bothering me.  My dictionary 
> says "pertaining to or composed of right angles".  It's frequently used 
> as a buzz word but seems to be without content in the context of NTP.

It also means "independent" or "uncorrelated". For example see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal#Computer_science

So Uwe's point is correct: designing an NTP hierarchy to be a failsafe 
system (up to a point) does not preclude it from also reporting failures 
even if they are not (yet) service-affecting. In fact, (and Uwe also 
made that point in his RAID analogy) _not_ reporting failures gives the 
administrator a false sense of security.

So +1: ntpd should report failures to syslog.

The question is what sorts of things it should be reporting. Things that 
I can think of:

- synchronisation not achieved within the expected period after startup;
- stratum higher than expected
- smaller than expected number of servers reachable
- the set of reachable servers consists of exactly two servers of equal 
stratum (which is the worst case)

Cheers, Jan




More information about the questions mailing list