timedatex replacing systemd-timedated for NTP packages

[Andrew Lutomirski]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Tom Gundersen <teg at jklm.no> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net> wrote:
>> Once upon a time, Tomasz Torcz <tomek at pipebreaker.pl> said:
>>> On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 08:01:37AM -0600, Chris Adams wrote:
>>> > Once upon a time, Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat.com> said:
>>> > > Do we even use the DHCP NTP server assignment?
>>> >
>>> > I believe it is used for chrony and ntpd, don't know about sysmted's new
>>> > implementation.
>>>
>>>   systemd-timesyncd uses DHCP-provided NTP servers only if systemd-networkd
>>> is used as DHCP client.
>>
>> That should be a bug (and block it from use).  There's no excuse for
>> that other than "not invented here".
>
> There are technical reasons for this choice, not merely NIH.

And those technical reasons are?

I realize that the shell-script-fu that most DHCP clients seem to
require is a bit messy, but it does work, and it should be more than
flexible enough to plug in some systemd-timesyncd controls.

As a counterexample, I run some production servers with rather
complicated network configurations.  NetworkManager is a nonstarter,
and I suspect that systemd-networkd will never work for them either.
This isn't a complaint about either package -- I don't really expect
them to understand my configuration.  I use a Python script that reads
a rather large hand-curated config file and outputs Debian
interfaces(5) rules with a liberal sprinking of "up" and "down"
directives.  (Yes, this is an Ubuntu system, not Fedora.  If I were
doing it over, I'd be using Fedora or CentOS, and I'd grumble at the
fact that interfaces(5) is IMO much better than the Fedora
equivalent.)

The upshot is that I won't be using systemd-networkd any time soon.
Again, this is in no way a criticism of systemd-networkd.

I do use NTP, and I don't really care much which implementation I'm
using, but if systemd-timesyncd refuses to be reasonably configurable
unless systemd-networkd is installed, I won't be using *that* any time
soon either.

And if Fedora becomes dependent on services that aren't configurable,
then the next time I reconsider what distro I use, Fedora's going to
have a big mark against it.

--Andy