Package: ntpdate Version: 1:4.2.2.p4+dfsg-1 Severity: normal
Hi, it appears that the new way ntpdate-debian is called from if-up.d (starting it as a background process to prevent delays during boot) can lead to a race with hwclock.sh which is called later from rcS. In my case, ntpdate was seemingly started after the interface went up and ran a while in the background. In the meantime, hwclock.sh corrected the clock according to CMOS clock information. At this point, the clock is correct, but ntpdate is still not completed. When it finally completes, it corrects the clock by another hour, resulting in a wrong clock. The unsatisfactory result is that though I have a correct CMOS clock, working NTP servers and I am running both ntpdate and a local NTP server, I end up with the wrong time. Due to the large offset, ntpd will not fix the clock, either. My CMOS clock is running in local time (intentionally) which is CET. I don't see a perfect solution for this issue, as backgrounding ntpdate was requested in a lot of bug reports and should probably stay. Either ntpdate itself is broken and assumes that nothing else could change the system clock during the long seconds it might need from start to the actual correction, or it interferes in another unexpected way with hwclock (which delays a bit for itself due to the CMOS clock specifics). Of course there is a general problem anyway, as there is AFAIK no atomic method of getting and setting the system clock in POSIX. But it depends on the actual coding whether this race condition will be exposed with significant probability - I could repeat it over and over again and get the wrong time on every reboot... Is there any decent reason why hwclock.sh is S50 in rcS.d? Having it run significantly earlier would get rid of the problem quite nicely and the system would have correct time earlier in the boot process as well. TIA, Andre. -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.17.13 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Versions of packages ntpdate depends on: ii libc6 2.3.6.ds1-4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libcap1 1:1.10-14 support for getting/setting POSIX. ii libssl0.9.8 0.9.8c-3 SSL shared libraries ii netbase 4.27 Basic TCP/IP networking system ntpdate recommends no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
