Re: [gpsd-dev] Clarifications needed for the time-service HOWTO

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Harlan!

On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 00:26:59 +0000
Harlan Stenn <address@hidden> wrote:

> > > One of those steps would be to point folks at a good central
> > > location for this information.
> > 
> > Sadly (?), looks like gpsd is going to be that central location.
> 
> That would be a choice, and it's not my preferred choice.  But I'm not
> the one writing these scripts, and I'm not the one choosing to commit
> the results to the gpsd repo.

He who does the free work makes the choices...
 
> What version of sntp are you using?  

# sntp --version
sntp 4.2.6p5

That is the latest on Gentoo.

> What version are they using?

Dunno.

> Do you know what the -d flag does?

Have I read the man page?  Yes.  Have I read the code?  No.

I'm just doing what I was told to do by someone in gpsd-dev

> > Here is what I get, not exactly noob driendly:
> > 
> > # sntp -d 0.pool.ntp.org
> > 22 Oct 15:25:20 sntp[30018]: Started sntp
> > Starting to read KoD file /var/db/ntp-kod...
> > 22 Oct 15:25:56 sntp[30018]: Error looking up 0.pool.ntp.org:
> > System error Unable to resolve hostname(s)
> 
> What are you seeing that you do not want to see, and what are you not
> seeing that you want to see?

As I said before.  With or without -d, no indication of stratum.
The whole start  of the discussion was to give esr a way to see the
stratum.

> Here's what I see:
> 
> address@hidden sntp 0.pool.ntp.org
> sntp address@hidden Sun Nov 25 09:51:12 UTC 2012 (6)
> kod_init_kod_db(): Cannot open KoD db file /var/db/ntp-kod
> 2013-10-22 17:13:52.389985 (+0800) +0.5167 +/- 0.065132
> 0.pool.ntp.org 208.79.93.34 s3 address@hidden

Here is what I see:

# sntp 0.us.pool.ntp.org
22 Oct 17:35:14 sntp[32489]: Started sntp
2013-10-22 17:35:14.786248 (+0800) +0.00353 +/- 0.067505 secs
2013-10-22 17:35:14.849483 (+0800) +0.000553 +/- 0.051254 secs
2013-10-22 17:35:14.927857 (+0800) +0.001923 +/- 0.000443 secs
2013-10-22 17:35:15.017250 (+0800) +0.008052 +/- 0.042847 secs

No stratum.

> You've got the date/time and timezone offset, the correction, the
> expected error, the hostname, host IP, and stratum.

No, you have, I do not.

> > To create a document to show the user how to create a 'good'
> > stratum 1 server using a GPS and gpsd.  Along the way the user
> > needs to know how his chimer compares to that of others and knowing
> > that how to adjust his fudge.
> 
> If we are going to remove all refclocks from ntpd that gpsd can cover,
> that's a strong point.  If there are GPS refclocks that ntpd currently
> covers that gpsd does not, then the argument of putting these utils
> and docs in gpsd is much weaker.

As I said, esr waits for no one.
 
> If a significant poriton of the docs and/or utils are generallhy
> useful, that's an argument for putting this in the NTP distribution.

Feel free to copy with attribution.  The gpsd crew thinks there is a
need for a single unified document that is gpsd centric and that gives
a noobie all he needs to know to get up and running as a strtum 1.
Eric has already been adding links to canonical references as they are
identified.  

We have seen this sort of howto badly done many places around the net and
want to finally do it right.  Just today a lot of time was spent on #gpsd
due to one flawed example causiing users grief.

> > Ideally, maybe yes.  But esr waits for noone.
> 
> What's to wait for?  I can turn folks in to NTP committers pretty
> easily, and if they don't want to do that we also accept patches,
> preferably as attachments to bug reports at bugs.ntp.org.

I'll let esr's comments on this stand for themselves.

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97701
        address@hidden  Tel:+1(541)382-8588

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