chrony as default NTP client?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 7:35 AM, Miroslav Lichvar <mlichvar at redhat.com> wrote:
> With the latest improvements in the chrony package related to
> NetworkManager and name resolving I think it is now good enough to
> replace ntpd in the default configuration and the configurations
> supported by system-config-date.

Hi Miroslav,

lets go over a couple of things to help lower the grumpiness of others.

1) Who are you?
2) What is your position in regards to knowing ntpd and/or chrony in
stability and other things?

I think most people do not know who maintains ntpd, and do not know if
this is a "Oh wow I just found this really great software program and
we should change to it right away!!!!" kind of email.

> I'm proposing to add a support for chrony to system-config-date and
> change the dependency. As chrony supports only a subset of the NTP
> protocol and misses many of the ntpd features, users will have to
> install the ntp package manually if they have a specific requirement
> or need to use a more complicated configuration.

Ok time is one of those touchstone security tools that people get all
kinds of crazy about when things get changed. Here are a couple of
questions that might help:


1) Why chrony? Why not OpenNTPD [fill in the blank here]
2) Where is the data that chrony actually controls the clock better?
3) How far have you/others tested it in comparison with ntpd?
4) A release plan should probably look like the following:


Fedora-14 we add chrony into alternatives or other commands needed to
get it to work. System-config-date has pathways to configure one or
the other when it is seen. Test days and reviews are done to see how
it is going. Organize a short-term sig and get Mo to make a design for
shirts (melting clocks sounds a good idea). People who test, find
bugs, etc etc qualify for a drawing of stuff.

Fedora-15 from feedback we have gotten on chrony, we go through the
plan of making chrony default (or not) and make ntpd optional.

This is one alternative plan ( a bit slow but for security related
things probably better.).  To speed it up we need to move get people
motivated towards 12/13 testing and feedback.




-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
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