[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#606107: Bug#606107: ntp: handle empty ntp.conf gracefully (working around system-tools-backends bug)

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Dec 07, 2010 at 09:31:32PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On mån, 2010-12-06 at 12:35 +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > I entirely agree that this should be fixed in system-tools-backends,
> > and I've sent a patch upstream (I'll copy this to the Debian bug
> > shortly too).  However, there are a couple of fairly unintrusive
> > things that could be changed in ntp to cope with this.  Firstly, Mika
> > Wahlroos sent a patch to the Launchpad bug referenced above which
> > makes ntpdate-debian disregard empty files.  Secondly, ntp.preinst
> > could remove an empty /etc/ntp.conf on fresh installations.
> 
> I don't really agree with these changes.  An empty ntp.conf is an error
> and should not be masked.

What useful information can this state possibly convey?

> Why not just fix the GNOME side and let that be it?

Think of the user.  system-tools-backends has left the empty ntp.conf
around, without any hint to the user about this; now installing the ntp
package (which gnome-system-tools does for you behind the scenes if you
ask it to set up time synchronisation, but might of course also happen
by hand) incomprehensibly still leaves an empty ntp.conf, which as you
say is an error.  In what way is this better than just dealing with the
problem by removing the empty file so that a proper one can be put in
place?  I don't see who this benefits.

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at debian.org]