svn commit: r289421 - in head/etc: . mtree ntp

[Bryan Drewery]

On 10/17/15 11:25 AM, Ian Lepore wrote:
> On Fri, 2015-10-16 at 14:04 +0000, Cy Schubert wrote:
>> Author: cy
>> Date: Fri Oct 16 14:04:16 2015
>> New Revision: 289421
>> URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/289421
>>
>> Log:
>>   Add default leap-seconds file. This should help ntp networks get
>> the
>>   leap second date correct
>>   
>>   Updates to the file can be obtained from ftp://time.nist.gov/pub/ o
>> r
>>   ftp://tycho.usno.navy.mil/pub/ntp/.
>>   
>>   Suggested by:	dwmalone
>>   Reviewed by:	roberto, dwmalone, delphij
>>   Approved by:	roberto
>>   MFC after:	1 week
> 
> One thing about this change scares me.  In the ntpd documentation:
> 
>     If the leapseconds file is present, the leap bits for reference
>     clocks and downstratum servers are ignored.
> 
> I can't determine from casual code examination (and I don't have time
> to experiment now) whether that is true even if the file is expired.
> 
> The leapfile expires every six months, and users must update it using
> some external mechanism, or they must have configured autokey stuff so
> that updates can be accepted from peer servers.  In either case what
> we've done is created a default configuration that is likely to fail
> right out of the box, because at least for releases the file we deliver
> will be expired before they even download and install the image.
> 
> At the very least I think we should hold off on MFC of this until we
> know for sure whether an expired-but-present leapfile causes incorrect
> operation.  If a pending leap notification in the leap bits of packets
> from peer servers and refclocks will be honored when the file is
> expired, then there is no problem with this change.
> 

Yeah. This sounds like something that needs to be delivered more easily
in a normal update mechanism, such as packages.  ENs every 6 months are
not practical for this and a lot of users don't always apply EN while
IMO they are more likely to apply package upgrades. Short of that, some
kind of periodic script could fetch an updated file <enter ssl cacert
discussion>.



-- 
Regards,
Bryan Drewery