Linux: concerns over systemd adoption and Debian's decision to switch

Thu Oct 23 03:05:30 UTC 2014

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 9:18 PM,  <Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:45:01 -0500, Jeffrey Ollie said:
>
>> As I've already said a couple of times, systemd does not force a
>> particular NTP implementation on you.  It comes with one (timedated),
>> and has a utility to manage it (timedatectl) but the admin can install
>> and use a different one if they like.
>
> Yeah, and if you want anything else to integrate in with systemd other than the
> supplied SNTP, you can pretty much go pound sand, according to Marcel Holtmann:
>
> "So this means that you get a really good basis where clocks are synchronized.
> If you want something better, you can install it. It is a waste of time trying
> to integrate anything else than timesyncd since if you use anything else, you
> will manually configure it and use its advanced options. If you do not need the
> advanced features, then why install other NTP clients in the first place."
>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2014-August/022572.html
>
> You should read the whole thread at freedesktop - it's pretty obvious that
> there's a really heavy bias towards "we have a solution that's good for
> desktops, and if you have a different use case, go pound sand".

Yes, I've read the thread, and I think "go pound sand" is an unfair
characterization of what *I* saw in that thread.

To achieve the level of integration that timedated has with the rest
of systemd would require more than just putting code into timedatectl
to write out /etc/ntpd.conf and starting a service.  timedated talks
to networkd (that
DHCP server that everyone is hating on as well) in real-time to
determine the state of the network and to get any NTP servers that
were sent in DHCP packets.  To do that for chronyd or ntpd in the same
way would require code changes and the systemd developers didn't want
to do the work, as far as I know no one else has done the work, and
I'm skeptical of the chances that such patches would get accepted
upstream.

So, if you want/need to run chronyd or ntpd you can, it'll "integrate"
into the system just like any other service would, and you'll be no
better/worse off than before timedated came into existence.

-- 
Jeff Ollie