[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
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