timedatex replacing systemd-timedated for NTP packages

[Lennart Poettering]

On Tue, 25.11.14 16:23, Miroslav Lichvar (mlichvar at redhat.com) wrote:

> This is about bug #1136905 [1], discussed previously on the systemd list
> [2] and also on our desktop list [3].
> 
> The issue is that systemd-timedated now supports only systemd-timesyncd
> for NTP and ignores other NTP services installed on the system. It doesn't
> know that chronyd or ntpd is enabled (usually by system-config-date after
> the installation) and switching NTP in timedate clients such as
> timedatectl and GNOME control center is broken.
> 
> If we want to have this working correctly with chronyd/ntpd, at this point
> it seems the only reasonable option is to replace systemd-timedated.
> timedatex is a new implementation of the timedate interface that was
> recently added to Fedora. It reads the list of NTP units from a directory
> as systemd-timedated used to do. When installed, systemd will start it for
> the timedate bus name instead of systemd-timedated. The timedate clients
> should work as expected, please report bugs if not.
> 
> One suggestion was to install it as a dependency of the NTP packages.
> Is this a good idea? Should this first go through the Fedora change
> process or at least be documented somewhere?

Really? if you want a UI that controls whether NTP server software is
running, why not call into the EnableUnitFiles() APIs directly?

Also, if you want timedated to be a frontend for configuring *server*
software, will you add another tool next, for controlling a HTTP
server?

I am sorry, but timedated is really not the place to control NTP
*server* software. It's simply, desktopy stuff, for controlling NTP
clients. And if you install a full NTP server, then the NTP client
already gets kicked out of the initil transaction and all is good. 

The way to configure server software is via "systemctl enable" and
"systemctl disable" not via "timedatectl". 

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat