Bug 359502

Summary: ntpdate call without timeout setting stalls bootup when network down
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE 10.3 Reporter: Jo Schulze <jo>
Component: NetworkAssignee: Peter Varkoly <varkoly>
Status: RESOLVED INVALID QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Enhancement    
Priority: P5 - None    
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: openSUSE 10.3   
Whiteboard:
Found By: --- Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Bug Depends on: 365515    
Bug Blocks:    

Description Jo Schulze 2008-02-07 11:05:45 UTC 
When ntp is configured to query timeservers via ntpdate on startup, this can result in a very long bootup sequence if the timeserver(s) can't be reached (due to network down/timeserver moved/whatever).

Problem is that in /etc/init.d/ntp the call to $NTPDATE_BIN is done without the -t (timeout) option. If -t is omitted, the default is used, which AFAICS is 1800s. Thus, ntp stalls the bootup for 30min per timeserver which isn't really useful.

IMHO the best solution would be a new config option in /etc/sysconfig/ntp

## Type:           integer
## Default:        30
#
# Timeout for ntpdate
#
NTPD_INITIAL_TIMEOUT=30

and using this value in /etc/init.d/ntp when calling ntpdate
Comment 2 Andreas Schneider 2008-03-25 10:11:20 UTC 
ntpd -q is used instead of ntpdate now. ntpd doesn't have a timeout option.
Comment 3 Peter Varkoly 2008-04-13 23:02:57 UTC 
because of comment #2 we can not make it.