[ntp:questions] New features for Windows NTP Installer

Heiko Gerstung heiko_removeme_.gerstung at meinberg.de
Thu Aug 2 07:30:29 UTC 2007


David J Taylor schrieb:
> Heiko Gerstung wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> I am currently working on a new version of the installer and would
>> like to hear any feature requests you might have.
>>
>> At the moment I am working on adding Start Menu entries (can be
>> deselected of course but will be enabled per default) for
>>
>> - starting/stopping/restarting the service (using micro batch files a
>> la "net start ntp"
>> - basic NTP status monitoring (running "ntpq -p" in a DOS box, requery
>> every 10s)
>> - documentation (official HTML docs if installed plus Installer
>> Readme) - weblinks (to www.ntp.org, www.ntp.isc.org, www.pool.ntp.org 
>> and
>> www.meinberg.de/english/sw/ntp.htm)
>> - the configuration file (allows you to edit it with the assigned
>> program, e.g. for ".conf" files)
>>
>> This will add a little bit more visibility to NTP on Windows machines,
>> at least for the regular users.
>>
>> I will do some tests with the service dependencies (checking out
>> DNSCache for example) on various flavors of Windows and will add the
>> possibility to take care of the Windows firewall settings during an
>> unattended install (the current version of the installer checks for
>> the firewall settings during an interactive installation).
>>
>> If you have any other suggestions, please let me know. This would also
>> be a very good time to report any bugs you still see in the current
>> installer version!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>  Heiko
> 
> Heiko,
> 
> All sounds good.
> 
> With my own "restart" file, I do use the Windows "sleep" command (part of 
> the resource kit), so that you can:
> 
> net stop ntp
> sleep 3
> net start ntp
> sleep 3
> ntpq -p
> sleep 7
> 
> giving you the chance to see that it has started properly, and that some 
> servers have been found.  I needed this on my portable, as NTP would try 
> and start before DNS was working (i.e. before the wireless link had been 
> established).

Unfortunately I cannot rely on "sleep" being there on every Windows PC out 
there, my trick is to use "ping 127.0.0.1 -n 10 > NUL" to insert a ~10s delay 
between net stop and net start (otherwise the service would not start correctly).

> You /might/ want to add an association between .conf files and Notepad, so 
> that Notepad becomes the .conf file editor.  This should probably be 
> optional, but defaulted "on".
I will think about this, but I guess I can just hardlink to "notepad path\ntp.conf".

> I also like the idea of a link to the official documentation on the Web.
> Wherever that is.  <G>
Oh, the official documentation is per default installed on your local disk with 
the installer. But it can be found at www.ntp.org if you are looking for the 
most recent version :-)

> I wouldn't add too many menu entries, though.
I use submenus in order to keeps things small in regards to screen space.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

Best Regards,
Heiko



> Cheers,
> David 
> 
> 




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