Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:55:44 +0100 From: David Malone <dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie> To: Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr> Cc: freebsd-net@freebsd.org, Edwin Groothuis <edwin@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: NTP - default /etc/ntp.conf Message-ID: <200907020955.aa73037@walton.maths.tcd.ie> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:46:08 %2B0200." <20090702084608.GA59311@roberto-al.eurocontrol.fr>
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> > We are supposed to contact the people running the pool and ask for > > a freebsd.pool.ntp.org subdomain. > That's a good idea. OK - should I contact the pool guys and ask for freebsd.pool.org? > > Second, we shouldn't have the local clock configured by default. > Why? When Redhat did this, it caused a variety of niggles and compaints in the ntp community. The recent thread in comp.protocols.time.ntp gives one example where the local clock came under suspicion for causing various problems. It also interfers with people using real local clocks, where the system clock is controled by something other than NTP, and you just want NTP to distribute the time. > > The local clock should only be configured on a single server in a > > NTP domain that might be disconnected from the rest of the tree. > > Since the default config is a client config, it doesn't make sense > > to have the local clock configured. Even if it was a server config, > > it still wouldn't make sense, because it is only useful if a single > > server has it configured. > I do not see the point in removing it, it helps to keep the ntpd daemon > running if for some reason it loses the "real" ntp servers. It's definitely a misconfiguration to ship it by default. If you have many clients all with a local clock configured, then, when disconnected, they all just follow themselves rather than following the clock on a server. If you have it configured on several servers you end up with some clients following each of the servers, but they won't all stay together unless you're lucky. For this use of the local clock, you only want one local clock per island that might become disconnected. (Also, we probably really want people to run in orphan mode rather than local clock mode, but we can wait a little longer until orphan mode is more commonly deployed, IMHO...) David.
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