[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#483174: Bug#483174: ntpdate does not seem to prefer AAAA over A records when resolving host names

[Peter Eisentraut]

Jochen Antesberger wrote:
> I noticed that ntpdate somewhat randomly connects to my ntpd by either
> IPv6 or V4, instead of prefering IPv6 when availabe. I guess it just
> gets the DNS records in random order and/or selects one randomly. That
> is probably desired within one address family (RR records) but it
> should keep AAAA and A apart and do the random selection from each
> group. IPv6 should be preferred of course to facilitate the
> transition, just as it is done by most IPv6 aware applications.

Which IP address is returned from name resolution is decided somewhere between 
your C library and the DNS server.  You should probably start debugging this 
elsewhere.  I doubt ntpdate is at fault, especially so since the results are 
random rather than only of one kind.