Steve Kostecke <koste...@ntp.org> wrote: > On 2013-10-12, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote: > >> That is good to hear, but does not solve the problem that ntp.conf is >> there for the admin to make changes to in order to solve problems >> peculiar to his system. I may not want the freebsd pool servers-- >> because they are bad or because they are too far away. I may want to set >> up 5 (not 2) additional servers, some of which are refclock servers. To >> have to edit an init.d file, whose purpose is to start ntpd, not to >> configure it, is just supid. Somebody on the freebsd distro has no idea >> what he is doing. > > This is an issue with FreeNAS, not with FreeBSD. > > FreeNAS is an appliance, not a general purpose OS. These sorts of > appliances often utilize a GUI to handle configuration tasks and store > the resulting data in a custom data store. Configuration files, such as > /etc/ntp.conf, are generated at the appropriate times from this data > store. > > A real world example of the risks of relying on a GUI.
No, a real world example of bad design. A GUI is fine but it should always manipulate the actual configuration files, not some generic storage used to generate the files. This mistake has been made many times in the Unix world. This is why the Windows Registry is such a good idea. You have a universally accepted configuration store that both the GUI tools and the relevant software can access and update. When FreeBSD (and Linux) had a registry, problems like this would not occur. ntpd would just read its configuration from the registry, and it would be a breeze to change poolservers with either the GUI or the generic registry editor, without confusing anyone. _______________________________________________ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions
