It appears that one of the NTP servers I synchronize to is gone. As soon as I removed its line from /etc/ntp.conf, ntp-server worked again.
I consider upstream's code as broken and non-resilient: a server that kills itself upon startup simply because one of several possible NTP reference servers listed in ntp.conf is not resolvalbe is a dead cat. -- Martin-Éric Racine http://www.iki.fi/q-funk/
