Bad NTP in Fedora repository?

Bob Arendt rda at rincon.com
Wed Nov 19 15:38:15 UTC 2003


Bret Hughes wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-11-18 at 22:04, Mike Klinke wrote:
> 
>>On Tuesday 18 November 2003 15:08, Bob Arendt wrote:
>>
>>>When I upgraded, it appears that the ntp daemon (ntpd) now runs as
>>>user "ntp".  My old /etc/ntp.conf referenced a /etc/ntp.drift file
>>>that ntp now couldn't write - ntp also wants to create a temp file in
>>>the driftfile directory. The new redhat scheme has the driftfile at
>>>/var/lib/ntp/drift, with the directory and file belonging to user
>>>ntp, group ntp.
>>>-Bob Arendt
>>>
>>
>>I added a bugzilla note for ntp/fedora earlier today:
>>
>>https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=110321
>>
>>If you feel it worth your time and my description in bugzilla is 
>>adequate enough please add your comments and perhaps we can get this 
>>resolved to keep others from having to go through this same problem. 
>>
>>What led you to check/discover the new user?
> 
> FYI ntp running under its own user is not new :
> 
> [bhughes at tulfw1 bhughes]$ cat /etc/redhat-release 
> Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)
> 
> [bhughes at tulfw1 bhughes]$ ps axu|grep ntp
> ntp       3417  0.0  4.1  1884 1876 ?        SL   Aug04   0:58 ntpd -U
> ntp
> 
> [bhughes at tulfw1 bhughes]$ rpm -q ntp --last
> ntp-4.1.1-1                                   Sat 18 Jan 2003 01:20:57
> AM CST
> 
> Bret
> 
True, this behaviour may not be new.  I was getting this in /var/log/messages:
   ntpd[613]: can't open /etc/ntp.drift.TEMP: Permission denied

I assumed that ntpd is creating a new TEMP file, then renaming over the
old one.  Since it's running as "ntp" it couldn't create the file in /etc.
I may have copied my ntp.conf file (or portions of it) from an old Tru64
system, so it's likely that /etc/ntp.drift was my doing.  Looking in a RH8
rpm, they create /etc/ntp/drift, so the directory can belong to the deamon.

I've uninstalled and re-installed ntp and looked at the post-install script.
Looks like the FC1 RPM is doing the right thing.  It was *my* dumbass entry
for the drift file location that tripped me up.  Sorry for any confusion
this may have caused.
-Bob Arendt





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