FS#40319 - [ntp] PIDFile in ntpd.service causing problems

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Robert Mackanics (schnoopay) - Monday, 12 May 2014, 04:02 GMT
Last edited by Gaetan Bisson (vesath) - Friday, 06 June 2014, 11:38 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Gaetan Bisson (vesath)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:
The addition of the PIDFile=/run/ntpd.pid to ntpd.service has caused ntpd to cease to be able to resolve hostnames on my system.

Placing the PIDFile option after the ExecStart line seems to fix this. I'm baffled as to why this would be.

Additional info:
* package version(s)
* config and/or log files etc.


Steps to reproduce:
This task depends upon

Closed by  Gaetan Bisson (vesath)
Friday, 06 June 2014, 11:38 GMT
Reason for closing:  No response
Comment by Gaetan Bisson (vesath) - Monday, 12 May 2014, 16:42 GMT
Are you really sure the PIDFile line is to blame for this?

We could remove it entirely but I would like to make sure that it is the culprit first.
Comment by Robert Mackanics (schnoopay) - Tuesday, 13 May 2014, 08:25 GMT
With ntpd.service like this:
PIDFile=/run/ntpd.pid
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ntpd -g -u ntp:ntp -p /run/ntpd.pid

ntpq -p reports this:
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
==============================================================================
*debug0-f0-0-081 204.186.0.254 3 u - 64 1 9.875 -0.221 2.817
debug0.wb3.ptd. 204.186.0.254 3 u 1 64 1 14.117 -0.278 0.999

With ntpd.service like this:
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ntpd -g -u ntp:ntp -p /run/ntpd.pid
PIDFile=/run/ntpd.pid

ntpq -p reports this:
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter
==============================================================================
*debug0-f0-0-081 204.186.0.254 3 u 1 64 1 9.693 -0.827 1.528
debug0.wb3.ptd. 204.186.0.254 3 u - 64 1 14.176 -0.945 1.292
bindcat.fhsu.ed 132.163.4.103 2 u - 64 1 56.606 2.638 0.314
soft-sea-01.ser 216.171.120.36 2 u 1 64 1 79.618 2.932 0.533

Which is the two servers by ip, and two servers from pool.ntp.org.

ntpd started from command line also works as expected. If I change ntp.conf to list the servers by ip after the servers by name I also get the expected result.

This may very well be something funky going on with my particular machine, as I installed arch on an old box to double check this (after I made the bug report), using the identical ntp.conf, and it worked fine. Also, on my main machine, listing the servers by ip last works fine, and only using servers with dns addresses also works fine.

I'm really confused as to what is going on here. If you want to chalk this up to an oddball one off case, I'm fine with that, as I can only reproduce this on one machine.
Comment by Gaetan Bisson (vesath) - Wednesday, 14 May 2014, 02:33 GMT
Well I won't be making changes to our ntp package until we figure out exactly what is going on and what the proper fix is. :)

However I'd be glad if we could really diagnose what is wrong there. But if you cannot reproduce that on another machine, I'm afraid we're going to have to call it bad karma...

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