[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#375280: ntpdate: only use one server by default

[Wolf Wiegand]

Package: ntpdate
Version: 1:4.2.0a+stable-9
Severity: normal

Hi,

in recent versions of ntpdate, NTPSERVERS in /etc/default/ntpdate
provides four servers to get the current time from:

NTPSERVERS="0.debian.pool.ntp.org 1.debian.pool.ntp.org
2.debian.pool.ntp.org 3.debian.pool.ntp.org"

Passing multiple servers to ntpdate tremendously slows down the
execution of ntpdate:

denkbrett:~# time ntpdate 0.debian.pool.ntp.org 1.debian.pool.ntp.org
2.debian.pool.ntp.org 3.debian.pool.ntp.org > /dev/null

real    0m10.812s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.008s
denkbrett:~# time ntpdate 0.debian.pool.ntp.org  > /dev/null

real    0m3.404s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.004s

At least for desktop machines, using multiple time servers is not
necessary, so it should be configurable through debconf if all servers
are to be used, or only one, determined dynamically. The latter could be
achieved by setting NTPSERVERS to something like
$(($RANDOM%4)).debian.pool.ntp.org (which is a bashism, unfortunately).

Regards,

Wolf

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=de_DE at euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages ntpdate depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.3.6-15   GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcap1                       1:1.10-14  support for getting/setting POSIX.

ntpdate recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information