On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 7:35 AM, Miroslav Lichvar mlichvar@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.