[hobbit] ntpdate deprecated

[Buchan Milne]

On Wednesday, 11 November 2009 12:00:19 Peter Welter wrote:
> Today, I discovered the following for the ntp-test on our Xymon server:
>
> Service ntp on xymon is OK (up)
>
>
> Command: ntpdate -u -q -p 2 132.229.84.242 2>&1
>
>        !!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> The ntpdate program is deprecated and should not be used any more.  To
>
> quote the upstream ntp developers:
>
>   "The functionality ntpdate offered is now provided by the ntpd daemon
>   itself.  If you call ntpd with the command line option -q it will
>   retrieve the current time and set it accordingly."
>
> Please check the Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon man page and
>   http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Dev/DeprecatingNtpdate
> for further information.
>
> You can replace the ntpdate call with "rcntp ntptimeset" to achieve an
> inital poll of the servers specified in /etc/ntp.conf.
>
> The program /usr/sbin/sntp offers comparable functionality to ntpdate.

Except the option flags are totally different.

>
> Specifically
>   sntp -P no -r pool.ntp.org
> is equivalent to
>   ntpdate pool.ntp.org
>
> For further details please refer to the man page of sntp.
>
> sntp: unable to write PID to /etc/sntp.pid
> sntp: Permission denied
>
>
> http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Dev/DeprecatingNtpdate#Set_the_time_before_
>running_ntpd
>
>
> I always thought I needed to run this ntp-test to make sure the time is
> correct on the central monitor server, to make sure that the time on other
> monitored hosts is checked correctly.
>
> Should I
>
> - change the NTPDATE="ntpdate"-location in /etc/hobbit/hobbitserver.cfg to
> NTPDATE="sntp -u" to make it work again?

This on it's own won't be enough, as additional options are added to the 
NTPDATE path:

$ grep -n -A7 NTPDATE ./bbnet/bbtest-net.c
991:    p = xgetenv("NTPDATE");
992-    strcpy(cmdpath, (p ? p : "ntpdate"));
993-    for (t=service->items; (t); t = t->next) {
994-            if (!t->host->dnserror) {
995-                    sprintf(cmd, "%s -u -q -p 2 %s 2>&1", cmdpath, 
ip_to_test(t->host));
996-                    t->open = (run_command(cmd, "no server suitable for 
synchronization", t->banner, 1, extcmdtimeout) == 0);
997-            }
998-    }

These options aren't supported by sntp. You could hack this by modifying the 
options, but the long-term fix (for people who don't have sntp yet) would have 
to be different.

> - disable the ntp-test since because it is useless for checking the correct
> time on monitored hosts.

NTP is not that useful for monitoring the time on monitored hosts,  (the 
client's built-in check is better, see the CLOCK option for hobbit-clients.cfg 
thresholds), unless you are running all your hosts as ntp servers. It is 
however useful for checking whether the host believes it should be able to 
provide time services to other hosts.

I only run this network test against NTP servers that other hosts use as time 
sources.

Regards,
Buchan