Bug 803644

Summary:	timedated fails to enable/disable NTP and fails to detect if NTP is enabled
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 12.3	Reporter:	Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro>
Component:	Basesystem	Assignee:	Reinhard Max <max>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Major
Priority:	P2 - High	CC:	forgotten_2I9xix4fwL, sorenson2743
Version:	RC 1
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86-64
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Michael Catanzaro 2013-02-14 05:23:49 UTC

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0

timedated is incapable of enabling/disabling NTP and fails to detect if NTP is actually enabled or not.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run the command timedatectl set-ntp TRUE

or

1. Click the NTP toggle on the Date & Time panel of GNOME System Settings.
Actual Results:  
Failed to issue method call: No such file or directory

or

(gnome-control-center:2423): datetime-cc-panel-WARNING **: Could not set system to use NTP: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.FileNotFound: No such file or directory

NTP is disabled according to timedatectl

Expected Results:  
NTP is enabled according to timedatectl

I suspect this is caused because ntpd doesn't install a unit into ntp-units.d as required by timedated, see http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/tree/src/timedate/timedated.c#n279 -- for 12.3 there might be need for an openSUSE patch to systemd to support our ntpd initscript.

timedated's dbus interface is a hard dependency of GNOME Control Center. This bug is split from Bug #796055

Comment 1 Erik Sorenson 2013-02-17 23:21:26 UTC

I don't know if this is the same thing, but ... clean install of 12.3rc1 KDE4 (tried with both 32 and 64 bit DVDs) into real partition, in a multiboot environment: Win7, 12.2 (default), 12.2 (another part'n, backup).  My 12.2 NTP both work fine, as does Win7 (with task/rule set to do NTP each boot time).

In 12.3 RC1 (and Mx IIRC), clock is off (ahead) by 5 hours, despite specifying Eastern US timezone in setup.  Moreover, using Yast - NTP setup to add a public time server will result in time re-setting to right time, but does not survive a shutdown, or that partition being activated after another of the multiboots, i.e., resets to 5 hours ahead again.

If I try to reset via clock applet, I get same error as original poster.

I tried copying in the /etc/ntp.conf file from my (OK) 12.2 installs, and no difference in Yast-NTP behaviour.  Contents of original /etc/adjtime:
0.000000 1361125321 0.000000
1361125321
LOCAL

Contents of (uncommented part of) original /etc/ntp.org:
server 127.127.1.0 
fudge 127.127.1.0  stratum 10
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/drift/ntp.drift   
logfile /var/log/ntp		  
keys /etc/ntp.keys		  
trustedkey 1			  
requestkey 1			  
server ca.pool.ntp.org  iburst

Comment 2 Frederic Crozat 2013-02-20 15:35:33 UTC

ntp package should be modified to ship with systemd service.

Comment 3 Erik Sorenson 2013-02-28 15:40:34 UTC

A whole "schwack" of updates via Yast has apparently fixed the NTP "wrong time" error condition.  Looks like RC2 and Final will  be OK in this area.

Comment 4 Michael Catanzaro 2013-02-28 17:04:14 UTC

That's good but not related to timedated; this is a systemd dbus interface used for managing various datetime settings.  You can test it via the timedatectl program or in GNOME System Settings (where you'll notice the NTP toggle does not reflect reality). timedated will not work until an ntp unit is installed into ntp-units.d.

Comment 6 Michael Catanzaro 2013-03-27 15:37:59 UTC

systemd 198 has a CanNTP property that allows timedated to be used even if NTP is unavailable, meaning timedated will no longer be completely broken once we upgrade to systemd 198. (GNOME 3.8 will check this property and set the NTP toggle insensitive if NTP is unavailable.) Yay! Therefore we no longer need our patches to gnome-control-center and gnome-settings-daemon that make GNOME work without timedated.

Well, "yay" provided we're fine with users configuring NTP during install or in YaST, and GNOME reporting it as being off and unavailable.  This seems really poor.  Are there any plans to provide an ntpd unit for 13.1?

Comment 7 Reinhard Max 2014-04-08 09:38:18 UTC

Not 13.1, but 13.2.