[comp.bugs.4bsd] The timed and I aren't getting along very well

root@odi.com (Operator) (09/08/89)

I've brought up the 4.3 timed under SunOS 4.0.3, more or less.
The typical failure mode is that the master is alive but ineffective
Tracing shows that it is getting an endless stream of acks from
a particular slave with the same negative sequence number.

When this is true, I can't turn tracing on. I get the feeling that
only the master ever actually traces? Or is it true that if -t wasn't
specified, then trace on is of no effect? I know this is not very coherent.
In the trace I saw, of a master started -t, once the bad sequence
numbers started to arrive then TRACEOFF requests also showed in the trace
but the trace continued.

Any direction as to what to investigate would be appreciated.

rusty@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU (09/09/89)

Toss timed and use ntp.  I tried the various known-to-work-on-suns
patches for the 4.3 timed and was never able to get it to work well.
ntp is much better anyways.

You can get the ntp sources from trantor.umd.edu in the directory
/pub/ntp.3.4.  The file ntp-test.tar.Z is what everyone seems to be
using.  In the directory /archive is a collection of the mail that's
been going around on the ntp mailing list.

There is a bunch of documentation on ntp on louie.udel.edu in
/pub/ntp.  And I just noticed that the ntp-test.tar.Z file is in there
as well so you don't need to go to trantor.umd.edu.

jpa@fps.com (Jeff Anderson) (09/11/89)

In article <8909081936.AA10167@garnet.berkeley.edu> 
rusty@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU writes:
>Toss timed and use ntp.  I tried the various known-to-work-on-suns
>patches for the 4.3 timed and was never able to get it to work well.
>ntp is much better anyways.

Well that's a responsible attitude.  Come on guys, if it doesn't work on
your machine, lets fix it.  That's what other vendors have to do, and I
can't believe it's that hard.  We have enough standards already without
implementing new ones because a single vendor doesn't like it.  I have
customers who use timed.  I'm supposed to tell them to change?  Because
Sun's not happy?  Timed is functional and it's an established standard --
maybe not the best, but it works TODAY on FPS machines, and DEC machines,
and probably lots of others.
Jeff Anderson		jpa@fps.com
FPS Computing		arpa : ucsd!celerity!jpa@nosc
9692 Via Excelencia, San Diego, CA 92126	  phone: (619) 271-9940

benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies) (09/13/89)

In article <617@celit.fps.com> jpa@fps.com (Jeff Anderson) writes:
>In article <8909081936.AA10167@garnet.berkeley.edu> 
>rusty@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU writes:
>>Toss timed and use ntp.  I tried the various known-to-work-on-suns
>>patches for the 4.3 timed and was never able to get it to work well.
>>ntp is much better anyways.
>
>Well that's a responsible attitude.  Come on guys, if it doesn't work on
>your machine, lets fix it.  That's what other vendors have to do, and I
>can't believe it's that hard.  We have enough standards already without
>implementing new ones because a single vendor doesn't like it.  I have
>customers who use timed.  I'm supposed to tell them to change?  Because
>Sun's not happy?  Timed is functional and it's an established standard --
>maybe not the best, but it works TODAY on FPS machines, and DEC machines,
>and probably lots of others.

A- You may be flaming the right vendor, but surely for the wrong reason.

1) rusty has nothing to do with Sun, so far as I know.

2) Sun don't even supply timed. Nor does it supply ntp. All they supply
is tired old rdate, which is pretty inadequate for keeping a mare's nest
of workstations in some faint sort of agreement.

As Sun users, I (and I presume, perhaps incorrectly) rusty have better
things to do with our time then port timed to SunOS. And our leverage
with sun is the usual: nil. So don't flame us for looking for
solutions wherever we can get them.

B- NTP and timed are two different things. timed's excuse for
existence is to take a bunch of equally (un)trustworthy clocks and try
to keep them in sync. It sure seems to feel free about using a lot of
CPU power to do so. NTP's purpose is to start with some source of
reliable time (like a fuzzball or a WWV receiver) and distribute it
hierarchically. Different sites fit the two different paradigms.  It
would be nice if both capabilities were integrated into one package.
They ain't.




-- 
Benson I. Margulies

smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) (09/14/89)

In article <617@celit.fps.com>, jpa@fps.com (Jeff Anderson) writes:
> Timed is functional and it's an established standard --

Actually, NTP was just declared an elective Internet standard; newly
documented in RFC 1119, hot off the "presses" (or at least disk
drives) at NIC.DDN.MIL.  Timed remains what it always was:  some
code developed at Berkeley, which others may or may not pick up.