Add timecounter option to rc.conf

[Paul Schenkeveld]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 11:49:50PM +0200, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote:
> > > (another such example is ntp.conf - the needs of most ntpd users can
> > > be met with an ntp.conf generated automatically from information which
> > > is already present in rc.conf)
> > The new NTP4 automatic configuration stuff is promising in this respect,
> > with a little luck people will need to configure nothing at all.
> 
> That would be nice, but we can still do far better than the status quo
> for the current version.  We actually have some of the required knobs
> (inherited from NetBSD along with the rest of rcNG) but they are not
> documented and still fall a little short of what I would like to see.
> 
> I would like to have a single ntp_servers variable listing NTP servers
> in the host's vicinity; if set, that list would be appended to the
> ntpdate command line, and used to autogenerate ntp.conf.  Of course,
> if it were empty (the default), any preexisting ntp.conf would be left
> intact.  I also think ntpdate_enable and ntpd_enable should default to
> YES if ntp_servers is non-empty, but that might be slightly more
> controversial.

On would expect that changing ntp_servers in rc.conf would be
sufficient to change your ntp servers bus if you leave an existing
ntp.conf intact only the first values ever put in ntp_servers will
be honoured.  This might be very confusing for those not familiar
with ntp.conf (and ntp_servers in rc.conf does not invite new admins
to learn about ntp.conf).

Another thing, *if* we want to automatically set up ntp.conf, what
about the NTP servers we were informed of by DHCP?

> DES
> -- 
> Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des at ofug.org