Hacker News Reader

Comment by Adaptive | Hacker News Reader

As has been noted, this is for timesyncd, usage of which is entirely optional. Additionally, as boneheaded as it is to use ntp servers from a single corporate entity when ntp.org exists, you can address this by setting your own ntp servers in the timesyncd conf file.

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/timesyncd.co...

FWIW, I really like timesyncd being there out of the box with systemd. It is exactly what I want, and nothing more, about 99% of the time when dealing with ntp synchronization.

EDIT:

Let me add that if you want to specify ntp.org servers right now you can add or edit the following stanza to your /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf file:

    [Time]
    NTP=0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org 2.pool.ntp.org 3.pool.ntp.org

View on HN

The issue is not that systemd is using NTP servers from a single corporate entity, it's that timeX.google.com are not meant to be public NTP servers: they do not provide UTC time they provide "Google time" and this difference will cause problems unless you intentionally want "Google time" and know what you're doing.

Every time I see someone point out a problem with systemd the response always seems to be "that's just <subcomponent>, and using it is optional".

Why can't systemd developers/apologists take responsibility for their bad design and horrible decisions?

Because Ubuntu become massively successful with its bad designs and horrible decisions, so now they have imitators.

Except Ubuntu did it by being good first and then attract a bunch of coattail riders to run the ship aground. Systemd got it backwards.

What does Ubuntu have to do with this?

What exactly are these fatal Ubuntu flaws?

> What does Ubuntu have to do with this?

Another example of a defective software product with an egotistical maniac at the helm (Mark Shuttleworth)?

> What exactly are these fatal Ubuntu flaws?

Unity? Upstart? Mir? The Amazon Shopping lens? A general failure to listen to the very community Canonical markets as a selling point? A terminal case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome? An inability to prevent any Ubuntu-derived device (Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu TV, and Ubuntu's mobile edition thus far) from being more-or-less commercial flops stuck permanently in development hell until they become vaporware?

For one, I'd argue that reasonable defaults mean that the defaults are not hardcoded into the ntp client, and don't point to some random company's servers. Additionally, given the many different places that configuration files could be located for this client, it makes debugging issues much more difficult, as you now have three directories and one file to look into if something starts going haywire. This is pretty much the opposite of well-designed.

That it's an optional and possibly little-used feature, makes it even more likely that a distro will forget to change the default, and that it will go unnoticed for a while, and then an end-user (end-sysadmin?) decides to use the feature... and is using NTP servers that _everyone_ involved agrees should not be used in production, and worse, the reasons they should not be used will not immediately apparent as soon as you use them, but are subtle and may result in confusing and difficult to diagnose problems in hard to predict ways.

I think this is why it offends some people's sensibilities so much to go down this route, you are leaving a very subtle and confusing hole for someone to fall into.

You only need to apply this "fix" if you are compiling systemd + timesyncd yourself and not using a distribution as source. Debian for example supply a different timesyncd.conf and include their own ntp servers.

seriously? this is as bad as leaving the default configuration path on a program as "C:\test.ini" and then telling people 'shut up and pass this and that parameter to change it, the problem is on you'

No, it is saying "don't build systemd from source unconfigured and then run it in production", which is an entirely reasonable point to make. systemd is meant to be, by self-description, "a toolbox to build an operating system", not "something you install and expect it to work". Distributions are expected to configure reasonable defaults amongst other configuration.

and where does it say that I have to configure it? and I'm quoting the man page here [1]:

"NTP This setting defaults to an empty list" "FallbackNTP If this option is not given, a compiled-in list of NTP servers is used instead"

"Files in /etc/ are reserved for the local administrator, who may use this logic to override the configuration files installed by vendor packages"

sorry but no: I'm not supposed to magically guess that the default setting is going to violate some term of services of a corporation, especially as:

" this list is combined with any per-interface NTP servers acquired from systemd-networkd.service(8)"

so all it say is it works trough discovery, be happy and configure the networkd service and all will be fine.

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/timesyncd.co...

Your distribution will already have set different defaults. Various of the major distributions have done so. Lennart also said he'd accept a patch to add a big warning in configure if you fail to provide these defaults.

Linking to a bugreport with an ongoing discussion is a bit pointless IMO. It's still being discussed!

Any binary default is wrong and broken, period. It's especially wrong and broken to set that binary default to a server you have no control over. It's triply wrong and broken to set that binary default to a server you have no control over whose maintainer has asked that you not use in this way. At the very least, the systemd team should have the decency to document what this default is so that administrators trying to hunt down suspicious and/or unusual activity have some starting point to go from.

"configured" as in "./configure". If you build systemd yourself, configure it. If you don't it will come with sensible defaults.

except default aren't anywhere close to sensible, which is the whole point really

The defaults on my installation are *.debian.pool.ntp.org. Can you give me an example of an installation with less sensible defaults?

edit: Ah, I think I now know where the misunderstanding lies. My "if you don't" refers to "if you don't build it from source", not to "if you don't ./configure it".

Why would this stuff be baked into the binary for the software?

And this seems to be a plague on Linux as of late.

I recall a few years back someone involved with a minor distro reached out to the X.org people for some assistance getting the thing to build.

The response was something akin to "Why would you do that?! Go install a big name distro already!".

There is something rotten in Linux userland...

You don't need to fix anything! You're distro should already have handled this for you!! This has almost NOTHING to do with end users.

> I really like timesyncd being there out of the box with systemd.

Does it still "spam" the journal with drift logs ? That might cause some extra wear on systems running on flash storage and it made me install ntpd instead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com