[ntp:questions] Finding out where ntpd gets its ntp.conf file

Unruh unruh-spam at physics.ubc.ca
Tue Sep 9 18:35:57 UTC 2008


David Woolley <david at ex.djwhome.demon.co.uk.invalid> writes:

>James Cloos wrote:

>> I read through most of the replies so far, but one thing I haven't seen
>> noted is that this isn't an ntp issue at al

>Did you mean service (8).

>Treating it as a black box is basically how Red Hat is marketed; it is 
>basically in the same market as Windows.  People who want a white box 
>Linux are more likely to choose something like Slackware.

service is a dead simple program. It runs its argument from the /etc/init.d
directory. 

Anyway, long ago we suggested that he looked in /etc/init.d/ntpd to see if
there was anything in there that suggested which config file was being
used. 
Or insert an 
echo "...."
where ... is the exact line that that script runs to start ntpd to see if
there are any interesting arguments to ntpd. 
Or put in an "env" in there to see exactly what the environment is that
ntpd sees. 

It is just a damn shell script. It is not a black box. 



>I think the OP has gone far beyond what the average RHEL administrator 
>is expected to do in terms of looking inside the box.

I find it extremely unlikely that RHEL uses anything but /etc/ntpd.conf but
if it does then it is up to Redhat to document it. I suspect either user
error or some admin in th epast of this organization has changed things and
never documented it. We have not had a report back from him as to what the
results were of all the suggestions we made. 





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