[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#513620: ntp: Please check for a loopback interface

[Vince Mulhollon]

Package: ntp
Version: 1:4.2.4p4+dfsg-8
Severity: wishlist

If you do not have a loopback interface configured then ntp will work and
sync your time, but ntpq will error out and fail to connect to the running
ntp server.

The only other common symptom of a missing loopback that I could find 
was that portmap / statd blows up (assuming you even have that installed
to run NFS).  NFS isn't your thing, I'm just including it to show that
ntpq is one of the few things that won't work without a loopback and 
nothing in Debian provides any error.

Maybe something as simple as in the start of the init.d script, grep the 
output of ifconfig for a Loopback and if none found, echo some comment 
about ntpq will not work until you add a loopback interface.

Some extra commentary at this blog post

http://vincemulhollon.blogspot.com/2009/01/debian-nfs-root-interface-configuration.html

Its easier than you would expect to end up with no configured loopback on 
a NFS-root mounted diskless workstation.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages ntp depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.110           add and remove users and groups
ii  libc6                    2.7-18          GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcap1                  1:1.10-14       support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libedit2                 2.11~20080614-1 BSD editline and history libraries
ii  libncurses5              5.7+20081213-1  shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libssl0.9.8              0.9.8g-15       SSL shared libraries
ii  lsb-base                 3.2-20          Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  netbase                  4.34            Basic TCP/IP networking system

Versions of packages ntp recommends:
ii  perl                          5.10.0-19  Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

Versions of packages ntp suggests:
ii  ntp-doc                 1:4.2.4p4+dfsg-8 Network Time Protocol documentatio

-- no debconf information