On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Theo de Raadt <dera...@cvs.openbsd.org> wrote:

> No thanks.
>
> I talked with a few people like this, and people who want to use rdate should
> be using it as rdate -n probably, and in that case, they should use ntpd -s
> instead.

I find rdate_flags useful on my work laptop - I usually boot at my
desk while connected to the network where our internal ntp servers
are.  It syncs, and then I take the laptop out to other
locations/networks where ntp is not accessible.  Running ntpd isn't
useful then and I would have to kill it after it set the time.  I
could run rdate manually after boot but the clock jumps.

How do other people keep correct time on their laptops when access to
ntp servers is intermittent?

> rdate is not a daemon.

Yeah, at first I didn't want to special-case it in /etc/rc and using
an rc.d script allowed it to nicely fit in at the right time during
boot.  How about this instead:

Index: rc
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/etc/rc,v
retrieving revision 1.385
diff -u -r1.385 rc
--- rc  11 Jul 2011 17:20:09 -0000      1.385
+++ rc  19 Jul 2011 00:53:49 -0000
@@ -415,7 +415,14 @@
 make_keys

 echo -n 'starting early daemons:'
-start_daemon syslogd ldattach pflogd named nsd ntpd isakmpd iked sasyncd
+start_daemon syslogd ldattach pflogd named nsd
+
+# run rdate before ntpd
+if [ X"${rdate_flags}" != X"NO" ]; then
+        echo -n ' rdate';       rdate -s ${rdate_flags}
+fi
+
+start_daemon ntpd isakmpd iked sasyncd
 echo '.'

 if [ X"${ipsec}" != X"NO" ]; then


I think it is a useful feature and like you said there are others that
think the same.  I'd hate to see it go.

Daniel

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