[systemd-devel] [PATCH] timedated: add configure option to set name of controlled NTP service

[Simon Peeters]

2014-08-26 14:37 GMT+02:00 Lennart Poettering <lennart at poettering.net>:
> On Tue, 26.08.14 16:34, Andrei Borzenkov (arvidjaar at gmail.com) wrote:
>
>> > I don't really think that timedated should manage an NTP server like
>> > ntpd/chrony. timedated's primary job is to be a service to GNOME and
>> > other DEs. But if an admin wants to upgrade to a full NTP server, then
>> > he should really enable/disable that with "systemctl" or a similar
>> > command.
>>
>> What's wrong with having standard API for querying whether NTP is
>> enabled on a system? Is it better if every DE has to use home-grown
>> checks multiplied by number of NTP implementations?
>
> We are simply not in that business. I mean, we don't provide the same
> for HTTP implementations, FTP implementations, webdav implementations,
> and so on either...

But we do for display managers, so maybe we can go the same way here:
- have al (s)ntp clients include Alias=timesync.service
- timedated uses timesync.service for:
  - checking wether ntp is enabled.
  - disabling ntp if requested.
- timedated still uses systemd-timesyncd.service to enable ntp.

I think this achieves what both sides want here:
 - it allows the admin to systemctl enable somentpd.service
 - it is quiet minimal in changes with what we have now (except the
Alias part in all other ntp service files)
 - it allows timedated to check and controll ntp even if an other ntp
server is used
    (with the caveat that disable and then enable will result in
switching to systemd-timesyncd)

just my 2c, if you think it is a good way to go, i'll be happy to write a patch.


Simon