On Friday 16 December 2005 7:30 pm, Bruce Marshall wrote:
The reason that SuSE doesn't turn [ntpd] on by default is because it *does* put a load on all of the time servers (especially by people who don't know how to operate NTPD) and you are *supposed* to ask permission or at least notify the owner of a time server that you are going to access it.
Your comment got me more curious about this subject and I did some investigation. The primary source of information about available timeservers is at http://www.cis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html. (You probably know that already, but my comment is for the benefit of other readers.) Here's what's said there, a couple of web pages in: <begin quote> pool.ntp.org uses DNS round robin to make a random selection from a pool of time servers who have volunteered to be in the pool. This is often good enough for end-users. The minimal ntpd configuration file (e.g. /etc/ntpd.conf) for using pool.ntp.org is: driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift server 0.pool.ntp.org server 1.pool.ntp.org server 2.pool.ntp.org server pool.ntp.org If you use only one pool server, we recommend you use the "bare" zone without a number, but if you use several, then use the numbered ones first. To make it possible to select a timeserver which is geographically close, we have sub-zones of pool.ntp.org. The "continent" ones are: Area: HostName: Worldwide pool.ntp.org Asia asia.pool.ntp.org Europe europe.pool.ntp.org North America north-america.pool.ntp.org Oceania oceania.pool.ntp.org South America south-america.pool.ntp.org There are also sub-zones for many countries. Click on your continent to see which country-zones are available there. <end quote> The upshot of all this is that the typical end-user should use one of the pool timeservers (they explicitly say that's okay, and no notification is needed or indeed possible) and put the references into /etc/ntp.conf. And given that, the typical end-user can also turn on ntp in the runlevel section of Yast without guilt. (And if you don't, your clock will drift.) Paul