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[bug#45794,0/1] services: openntpd: Remove support for deprecated "-s" option.

Message ID cover.1610381875.git.simon@simonsouth.net
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Simon South Jan. 11, 2021, 5:02 p.m. UTC
This patch removes support for OpenNTPD's deprecated "-s" command-line option
and the corresponding "allow-large-adjustment?" field from Guix's
openntpd-configuration record type.

Previously this option allowed OpenNTPD to make a single, arbitrarily large
adjustment to the clock at startup. In the current release this option has
been disabled[0] in favour of the use of authenticated constraints, and
configuring a service with "(allow-large-adjustment? #t)" now causes this
message to appear in /var/log/ntpd:

    -s option no longer works and will be removed soon.
    Please reconfigure to use constraints or trusted servers.

For systems like the ROCK64 that lack a battery-backed clock, generally the
solution is to replace the "allow-large-adjustment?" option with a setting
like

    (constraint-from '("www.gnu.org"))

which will give OpenNTPD an independent estimate of the current time and allow
it to evaluate the trustworthiness of the configured NTP servers.

[0] https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/usr.sbin/ntpd/ntpd.c?rev=1.127&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

--
Simon South
simon@simonsouth.net


Simon South (1):
  services: openntpd: Remove support for deprecated "-s" option.

 doc/guix.texi               |  6 +-----
 gnu/services/networking.scm | 12 +++---------
 tests/networking.scm        |  3 +--
 3 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)

Comments

Ludovic Courtès Jan. 16, 2021, 10:34 p.m. UTC | #1
Hi,

Simon South <simon@simonsouth.net> skribis:

> This patch removes support for OpenNTPD's deprecated "-s" command-line option
> and the corresponding "allow-large-adjustment?" field from Guix's
> openntpd-configuration record type.
>
> Previously this option allowed OpenNTPD to make a single, arbitrarily large
> adjustment to the clock at startup. In the current release this option has
> been disabled[0] in favour of the use of authenticated constraints, and
> configuring a service with "(allow-large-adjustment? #t)" now causes this
> message to appear in /var/log/ntpd:
>
>     -s option no longer works and will be removed soon.
>     Please reconfigure to use constraints or trusted servers.
>
> For systems like the ROCK64 that lack a battery-backed clock, generally the
> solution is to replace the "allow-large-adjustment?" option with a setting
> like
>
>     (constraint-from '("www.gnu.org"))
>
> which will give OpenNTPD an independent estimate of the current time and allow
> it to evaluate the trustworthiness of the configured NTP servers.
>
> [0] https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/usr.sbin/ntpd/ntpd.c?rev=1.127&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

Thanks for explaining.

> * gnu/services/networking.scm (openntpd-configuration): Remove
> "allow-large-adjustment?" field.
> (openntpd-shepherd-service): Remove use of "allow-large-adjustment?"
> configuration field and "-s" daemon option.
> * tests/networking.scm (%openntpd-conf-sample): Remove
> "allow-large-adjustment?" field.
> * doc/guix.texi (Networking Services)[openntpd-service-type]: Remove
> "allow-large-adjustment?" field from sample configuration.
> [openntpd-configuration]: Remove description of "allow-large-adjustment?"
> field.

Applied, thanks!

Ludo’.