'Twas brillig, and Colin Guthrie at 11/02/13 14:55 did gyre and gimble: > 'Twas brillig, and Pierre Jarillon at 11/02/13 14:23 did gyre and gimble: >> Le lundi 11 février 2013 13:18:23, Colin Guthrie a écrit : >>> So ntpdate as a service is just a one-shot thing, it happens once at >>> boot to ensure the clocks are properly set and then ntpd takes over for >>> the rest of the time that machine stays up. >>> >>> As far as I'm aware, there is nothing integrated into crontab regarding >>> ntpdate, but please feel free to correct me on that one. >> >> Yes, this was the old system. I am not an expert in ntp, but I have read >> carefully http://ntp.org few years ago and I return on it now and then. >> I can miss something... I am not the truth! >> >> On the web site http://www.ntp.org/ ->Implementation Documentation >> http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/ntpdate.html said: >> Disclaimer: The functionality of this program is now available in the ntpd >> program. See the -q command line option in the ntpd - Network Time Protocol >> (NTP) daemon page. After a suitable period of mourning, the ntpdate program >> is >> to be retired from this distribution >> >> And http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/ntpd.html and the man tell us: >> >> -q >> Exit the ntpd just after the first time the clock is set. This behavior >> mimics >> that of the ntpdate program, which is to be retired. The -g and -x options >> can >> be used with this option. Note: The kernel time discipline is disabled with >> this option. >> -g >> Normally, ntpd exits with a message to the system log if the offset exceeds >> the >> panic threshold, which is 1000 s by default. This option allows the time to >> be >> set to any value without restriction; however, this can happen only once. If >> the threshold is exceeded after that, ntpd will exit with a message to the >> system log. This option can be used with the -q and -x options. See the >> tinker >> command for other options. >> >> The same options are set in the man of ntp. >> >> IMO, ntpdate should be replaced with: ntpd -gq > > Yup that would be fine. > >> I don't understand why ntpdate is listed as an active daemon in >> drakxservices. > > This is simply because of the fact that drakxservices doesn't really > grok the kind of granularity you want here. > > See the direct output from e.g. "systemctl status ntpdate.service" vs. > "systemctl status ntpd.service" (hint: compare "active (exited)" vs > "active (running)") > > For the former, it's a "oneshot" and as it has been run and it ran > successfully, it's is thus considered "active". > > Really we should teach drakxservices to present that properly: e.g. show > it as "Completed" or something, rather than "Active" > >> In /etc/sysconfig/ntpd : >> - Mageia 1 : OPTIONS="-u ntp:ntp -p /var/run/ntpd.pid" >> - Mageia 2 : OPTIONS="-g" >> - Mageia 3 : OPTIONS="-g" >> >> Then it seems that ntpdate is no longer useful since Mageia 2. > > Yes indeed. It seems the -g option passed there makes the separate > ntpdate service obsolete. It basically gives ntpd a one-chance option to > do a big jump, which is basically what we were achieving with that > double unit setup. > > I'll kill off the ntpdate stuff. > > Many thanks for poking into this :)
Hmm, actually, I'm not sure the -g argument is sensible to pass to the daemon process generally. It seems that if it cannot reach a server (i.e. no networking) then the daemon exits. Certainly that is what I've seen here. Also, running ntpd -qg here with a large skew seems to not actually work here :s [root@jimmy ~]# systemctl stop ntpd.service [root@jimmy ~]# date Thu 21 Feb 18:02:19 GMT 2013 [root@jimmy ~]# date Thu 21 Feb 18:02:23 GMT 2013 [root@jimmy ~]# ntpd -qg ntpd: time slew +0.000000s [root@jimmy ~]# ntpdate pool.ntp.org 21 Feb 23:02:53 ntpdate[7741]: step time server 149.5.113.103 offset 18004.588317 sec [root@jimmy ~]# ntpd -qg ntpd: time slew +0.000000s [root@jimmy ~]# systemctl start ntpd.service So perhaps we should restore the previous setup? Col -- Colin Guthrie colin(at)mageia.org http://colin.guthr.ie/ Day Job: Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/ Open Source: Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/ PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/ Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
