[ntp:questions] Re: ntp startup behaviour under Windows

Danny Mayer mayer at ntp.isc.org
Mon Aug 21 11:37:32 UTC 2006


John Allen wrote:
> "Danny Mayer" <mayer at ntp.isc.org> wrote in message 
> news:44E7D535.6090601 at ntp.isc.org...
>> John Allen wrote:
>>> I've been looking into the startup behaviour of ntp under Windows. I'm
>>> running ntp 4.2.0b from the Meinberg distribution as a service under 
>>> Windows
>>> XP SP2.
> Save scenario as above, and I'm reporting errors via the Event Viewer.
> I am experimenting with a PC which starts up very quickly, so that ntp can't 
> resolve its server addresses, giving rise to messages like "couldn't resolve 
> `2.us.pool.ntp.org', giving up on it'. In the Event Viewer, these are 
> flagged as Errors, and indeed ntp isn't doing anything very useful, as it 
> was unable to resolve any of the server addresses when it started. So far so 
> good, and I understand what is going on.
> 

I recently put in a fix for this to change this behavior so that you can
get it to wait until it gets a proper response from DNS. I don't think
it's in Meinberg's build yet because of a different issue.

> However, from the point of view of Windows, the "NTP service" is still 
> running, ie this doesn't count as a "service failure". So my question is: 
> why is a non-functional ntp process continue to run?
> 

You can always add servers through the ntpdc commands and even if you
can't get to the servers it may be providing service to clients using
it. You can define a local clock to do this and still provide time.

> If it exited, then the Windows service manager would be aware that something 
> was wrong, and it could automatically restart the service.
> 

See above. It's not necessary to restart any more.

> I hope this question makes sense.
> 
> John

Danny



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