Re: [PATCH] Ship NTP changes

["Peter Müller" <peter.mueller@ipfire.org>]

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Hello Jon,

thank you for submitting this.

I consent with the intention of your patch, and believe this is the cure (or at least
a medicine) to insanely high clock drifts on some IPFire installations. Based on the
forum activity, there used to be more of them, but my gut feeling is that this issue
never completely went away.

Nevertheless, I would like to await Arne's feedback on this: Particularly on ARM systems
without a battery-backed RTC, IPFire comes up with a bogus time, and I am not sure what
the implications of this patch would be for such systems.

> Hello,
> 
> The change I made to the initscript ntp file does not seem very elegant!  But I was not sure of a better way too complete the same results.  
> 
>> +		echo -e "server	${NTP_ADDR_1} prefer\nserver	${NTP_ADDR_2}" > /etc/ntp/ntpInclude.conf
> 
> Is this OK or does it belong in a different section of code.  It needs to be updated when the NTP Servers are changed or when the time.cgi (Time Server) page is updated.

Hmm, I would favour a better solution as well. That file might be populated, and just
overwriting it seems to be a bit brutal to me. :-)

> -and-
> 
> Is chrony going to replace NTP?  If so, then the change below is not needed.

I would really like so, but don't see that happen in IPFire 2.x soon. For the medium
term at least, you patch is by no means obsolete.

> Please don't hurt me!

Hope I did not. :-)

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller

> 
> Jon
> 
> 
>> On May 26, 2022, at 7:40 PM, Jon Murphy <jon.murphy(a)ipfire.org> wrote:
>>
>> - Device time more accurate.  (e.g., +/- 10 seconds per day to < 100 ms on some devices)
>>   ( I know we don't need the perfect time server )
>> - NTP and time will be accurate in manual mode (setting on Time Server > NTP Configuration WebGUI)
>> - Change NTP "prefer" server:
>>    - The current preferred NTP server in an Undisciplined Local Clock.
>>    - This is intended when no outside source of synchronized time is available.
>>    - Change the "prefer" server from 127.127.1.0 to the Primary NTP server specified on
>>      the Time Server > NTP Configuration WebGUI page.
>> - Change allows the drift file (located at /etc/ntp/drift) to be populated by ntpd.
>>    - The drift file is updated about once per hour which helps correct the device time.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Jon Murphy <jon.murphy(a)ipfire.org>
>> ---
>> config/ntp/ntp.conf        | 3 ++-
>> src/initscripts/system/ntp | 2 ++
>> 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/config/ntp/ntp.conf b/config/ntp/ntp.conf
>> index 9e393ca8e..bcaf2ee9e 100644
>> --- a/config/ntp/ntp.conf
>> +++ b/config/ntp/ntp.conf
>> @@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
>> disable monitor
>> restrict default nomodify noquery
>> restrict 127.0.0.1
>> -server  127.127.1.0 prefer
>> +server  127.127.1.0
>> fudge   127.127.1.0 stratum 10
>> driftfile /etc/ntp/drift
>> +includefile /etc/ntp/ntpInclude.conf
>> diff --git a/src/initscripts/system/ntp b/src/initscripts/system/ntp
>> index 74b8bc86a..6c8174d25 100644
>> --- a/src/initscripts/system/ntp
>> +++ b/src/initscripts/system/ntp
>> @@ -52,6 +52,8 @@ case "$1" in
>> 			fi
>> 		fi
>>
>> +		echo -e "server	${NTP_ADDR_1} prefer\nserver	${NTP_ADDR_2}" > /etc/ntp/ntpInclude.conf
>> +
>> 		boot_mesg "Starting ntpd..."
>> 		loadproc /usr/bin/ntpd -Ap /var/run/ntpd.pid
>> 		;;
>> -- 
>> 2.30.2
>>
>