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ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

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mgant

Post subject: ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

Posted: 12.01.2011, 00:43

Joined: 2010-10-03
Posts: 4

Status: Offline

Some background; I received a small atomic alarm clock and had it on the same desk as my computer. I happened to notice that my computer's clock was about 8-9 seconds slower than the atomic clock. I run status on the service and the message says that it has failed. Hmmm. So I run

Code:

$ /etc/init.d/ntp

And it starts and the time is corrected. But why doesn't it start on boot? After the next reboot I check the service and again it failed to start. I attempt to duplicate what the startup script is doing and I see that it calls lockfile-create, lockfile-remove, and lockfile-touch. Trying to run these from the command line I discover that I don't have these programs. Aha! Checking apt I find that these are provided by the lockfile-progs package. I install it, reboot, and ntp starts properly. Great!

So a little more checking and I see that lockfile-progs is recommended by the ntpdate package:

Code:

$ apt-cache show ntpdate

Package: ntpdate

Priority: optional

Section: net

Installed-Size: 188

Maintainer: Debian NTP Team <pkg>

Architecture: amd64

Source: ntp (1:4.2.6.p2+dfsg-1)

Version: 1:4.2.6.p2+dfsg-1+b1

Depends: netbase, libc6 (>= 2.3.3), libcap2 (>= 2.10), libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8m-1)

Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.15.7.2)

Recommends: lockfile-progs

Breaks: dhcp3-client (<< 4.1.0-1)

Filename: pool/main/n/ntp/ntpdate_4.2.6.p2+dfsg-1+b1_amd64.deb

Size: 79998

MD5sum: 9e28c915c0957b77fb8bc0e6ec11f591

SHA1: e31d2e877e62a35a98b3bd9db95de0190bbfea6f

SHA256: 4d066d98f6f0e25f67f1fbd6d24e912ccc992fb66216dee7a33ae690ca3d0795

Description: client for setting system time from NTP servers

 NTP, the Network Time Protocol, is used to keep computer clocks

 accurate by synchronizing them over the Internet or a local network,

 or by following an accurate hardware receiver that interprets GPS,

 DCF-77, NIST or similar time signals.

 .

 ntpdate is a simple NTP client that sets a system's clock to match

 the time obtained by communicating with one or more NTP servers.  It

 is not sufficient, however, for maintaining an accurate clock in the

 long run.  ntpdate by itself is useful for occasionally setting the

 time on machines that do not have full-time network access, such as

 laptops.

 .

 If the full NTP daemon from the package "ntp" is installed, then

 ntpdate is not necessary.

Homepage: http://support.ntp.org/

Tag: admin::configuring, interface::commandline, network::client, protocol::ip, protocol::udp, role::program, use::timekeeping

So is this a bug? It seems like that lockfile-progs should be a required package so that ntpdate depends on lockfile-progs. Otherwise, ntp won't start at boot. I won't pretend that I fully understand what is happening but I suspect another service is running ntpdate and lockfile-* programs prevent ntp from stepping on ntpdate.

This is my first bug posting for aptosid so I apologize if I've not followed proper protocol.

Mike

devil

Post subject: RE: ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

Posted: 12.01.2011, 05:04

Joined: 2010-08-26
Posts: 491
Location: Berlin
Status: Offline

dont worry, there is no protocol other than to give as much info as possible. which you did. if it is a bug, it is probably a debian bug. i will try to clear this within the next hours.

greetz
devil

muchan

Post subject: RE: ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

Posted: 12.01.2011, 09:45

Moderator

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 469

Not directly related to this report, but I take opportunity to mention,
that our manual has section of NTP in a little unexpected position:
(I remember translating it, but could not find easily myself.)
Manual Menu
-> Internet connection, WiFi, LAN and Network
-> Aptosid LAMP staff
-> Timeserver setup
http://manual.aptosid.com/en/ntp-server ... ntp-server

(maybe the install command in the beginning need to be modified?)

slam

Post subject: Re: ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

Posted: 12.01.2011, 10:03

Team Member

Joined: 1970-01-01
Posts: 607
Location: w3
Status: Offline

mgant wrote:

... So is this a bug? It seems like that lockfile-progs should be a required package so that ntpdate depends on lockfile-progs. Otherwise, ntp won't start at boot. I won't pretend that I fully understand what is happening but I suspect another service is running ntpdate and lockfile-* programs prevent ntp from stepping on ntpdate.

This is my first bug posting for aptosid so I apologize if I've not followed proper protocol.
Mike

No, this is no bug. The Debian maintainer considers the application working fine manually (as you do), and understands the lockfiles as "recommended" for those who want additionally the daemon starting automaticly (which is optional).

So, nothing we can do except telling those who need it to install the recommended package additionally.

I moved this to "Software".

Greetings,
Chris

_________________
an operating system must operate
development is life
my Debian repo

DonKult

Post subject: RE: Re: ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

Posted: 12.01.2011, 11:10

Team Member

Joined: 2010-09-02
Posts: 485

Status: Offline

yeah, beside enabling installing of recommends for this package in pyfll to ship it on the cd's which slh did a few minutes ago with svn rev 28504. So the problem should be solved in the next release.

Debian expects that recommends are installed (in all but unusual cases). So installing them by default for all would be a good idea - IF maintainers of leaf packages wouldn't be too generous with recommends destroying the whole sense of it… Also, its a size-problem for the isos to enable them and more packages in a dist-upgrade can possibly mean also more problems…

All in all aptosid disables recommends by default (user is free to enable it) and just enables it for specific packages at iso-build time. But maybe we should start to think about blacklisting packages instead of whitelisting. After all the situation got better after (~ soon) 2 debian releases…

P.S.: I had it installed cause of a dependency of an other package which i don't know why i have it installed… Oh dear…

_________________
MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

slam

Post subject: Re: RE: Re: ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

Posted: 12.01.2011, 11:22

Team Member

Joined: 1970-01-01
Posts: 607
Location: w3
Status: Offline

DonKult wrote:

... But maybe we should start to think about blacklisting packages instead of whitelisting. After all the situation got better after (~ soon) 2 debian releases ...

I think we do well as we do now. Installing ALL recommended packages (plus all their recommended dependencies and sub, subsub-dependencies) by default is insane imho, and also removes the reason why "recommended" even exists. Debian did a bad decision with the Lenny release to do so, and I still hope they will revert. It already had motivated several package maintainers to not think any more about the difference between recommends and depends, " as they are installed both automaticly, anyway". Also look at the huge ammount of meta-packages in the repository, many of them with wild abuse of recommends, instead of "suggests".

Extending our white list, and using it not just at build time, but also for installed systems is an interesting idea we should really discuss in the team.

But this is not really related to the very bug report here, sorry for going off topic.

Greetings,
Chris

_________________
an operating system must operate
development is life
my Debian repo

DonKult

Post subject: RE: Re: RE: Re: ntpdate/ntp depends on lockfile-progs

Posted: 12.01.2011, 17:08

Team Member

Joined: 2010-09-02
Posts: 485

Status: Offline

(as said on irc) "i have a dream, that recommends will some day be used for what they are intended to and that the world will therefore be a better place" (sry, martin)

I think its a good idea to install recommends by default -- if they would be used as they should. Many (unfortunately mostly only the important) packages get it right and use dependencies for everything they need to not crash, recommends which makes them seriously more useful and suggests for the rest. ntpdate for example gets it right.

(I like recommends because many depends could become recommends - and would therefore move out of the complicate installation order calculation. So my 'i like it' is a strong but very uncommon one Wink

)

_________________
MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

mgant

Post subject:

Posted: 13.01.2011, 04:04

Joined: 2010-10-03
Posts: 4

Status: Offline

Thanks everyone for the explanations.

Some additional questions as a newbie to the debian package system.

What is this whitelist/blacklist that was mentioned by slam and DonKult?

Is this a configuration for apt?

Is it possible to enable installation of recommends on a per package basis?

Links to documentation would be great as I don't want to take up too much of anyone's time.

Thanks,
Mike

slam

Post subject:

Posted: 13.01.2011, 10:18

Team Member

Joined: 1970-01-01
Posts: 607
Location: w3
Status: Offline

You will find the changes Aptosid does to plain Debian in the package apt-conf-aptosid, source here.
The "whitelist" is part of pyfll, our build tool and can be found here
Greetings,
Chris

_________________
an operating system must operate
development is life
my Debian repo

DonKult

Post subject:

Posted: 13.01.2011, 13:15

Team Member

Joined: 2010-09-02
Posts: 485

Status: Offline

mgant wrote:

Is it possible to enable installation of recommends on a per package basis?

No. (Technical, you can on at least a section basis, but i wouldn't recommend it [and said it only to get this bad wordplay into this post] as it is more a temporary hack)

But every time you install an application APT shows you which packages it would recommend/suggest for installation, too. And if you thing it should do so either pick the package you want installed and add it to the request or add the commandline flag --install-recommends to install all recommends.
The configuration option is called APT::Install-Recommends by the way and set to 0 in the aptosid apt configuration file, but you can override it if you want…

_________________
MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

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