I've also hit this problem of the race condition with ntpdate. If ntpd dies for whatever reason (port in use, somebody stomping about with kill to prove the point) systemd thinks that this is fine. System configuration tools like Puppet won't try to start ntpd again as "systemctl status ntp" returns ok.
The sysv shim just isn't good enough. I ended up rolling my own local ntp package with a systemd unit file. Patch against ntp_4.2.6.p5+dfsg-7+deb8u1 Dan
diff -ruN a/debian/control b/debian/control --- a/debian/control 2015-10-23 18:04:42.000000000 +0100 +++ b/debian/control 2015-11-02 10:46:26.000000000 +0000 @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ Priority: optional Maintainer: Debian NTP Team <pkg-ntp-maintain...@lists.alioth.debian.org> Uploaders: Bdale Garbee <bd...@gag.com>, Peter Eisentraut <pet...@debian.org>, Kurt Roeckx <k...@roeckx.be> -Build-Depends: dh-autoreconf, debhelper (>= 6), libedit-dev, libcap2-dev [linux-any], libssl-dev (>= 1.0.0e-1), autogen (>= 1:5.11), bison +Build-Depends: dh-autoreconf, debhelper (>= 6), libedit-dev, libcap2-dev [linux-any], libssl-dev (>= 1.0.0e-1), autogen (>= 1:5.11), bison, dh-systemd Build-Conflicts: libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev, libwww-dev, libwww-ssl-dev Standards-Version: 3.9.3 Homepage: http://support.ntp.org/ diff -ruN a/debian/ntp.service b/debian/ntp.service --- a/debian/ntp.service 1970-01-01 01:00:00.000000000 +0100 +++ b/debian/ntp.service 2015-11-02 10:46:36.000000000 +0000 @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +[Unit] +Description=Network Time Service +After=network-online.target syslog.socket +Before=time-sync.target +Wants=time-sync.target network-online.target +Conflicts=systemd-timesyncd.service + +[Service] +Type=forking +EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/ntp +ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ntpd -u ntp:ntp $NTPD_OPTS +PrivateTmp=true + +[Install] +WantedBy=multi-user.target diff -ruN a/debian/rules b/debian/rules --- a/debian/rules 2014-07-16 17:49:08.000000000 +0100 +++ b/debian/rules 2015-11-02 10:47:52.000000000 +0000 @@ -95,8 +95,10 @@ dh_installdocs -a dh_installexamples -a dh_installman -a + dh_systemd_enable dh_installinit -pntp --update-rcd-params="start 23 2 3 4 5 ." --error-handler=installinit_error dh_installinit -pntpdate + dh_systemd_start dh_installcron -a dh_installlogcheck -a dh_installchangelogs -a
