Shippable ntp.conf files for the HOWTO

[Hal Murray]

> Are they all suboptimal?

How about way out of date.

The pool got started before the pool command existed and/or distros are/were 
running old versions of ntp.  Using several server lines was/is a way to use 
the pool without saying "pool".  Early versions of the pool command may not 
have worked well.  I don't remember that far back.

Using the pool command will drop servers that don't respond and replace them 
with new ones.  [In the future, we should be able to teach it to occasionally 
drop the worst server in hopes that the replacement is better.]

I think you should replace the 4 server lines with 1 pool line.  The 2 pools 
use IPv6 too.

The pool command hasn't been in the middle of this sort of sharp eyed 
scrutiny.  I won't be surprised if there are bugs or quirks.  The only one 
that I know of is that you have to remove the nopeer from the default 
restrict lines.


gem at rellim.com said:
>    # The iburst option tells ntpd to query the pool servers with an initial
>    # burst instead of single requests.  This can yield better results on
>    # startup to remote servers.

I dislike that use of "better".  Why not say "faster"?  They won't be better 
in the sense of more accurate.

I would say
  The iburst option lets ntpd get started faster.


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.