Progress, and a puzzle.

[Hal Murray]

> For those of you interested, Mode 6 is now fully documented at docs/
> mode6.txt.  It's a strange piece of design - very nearly excellent, but with
> a bunch of inconsistencies and odd glitches that spoil the effect.

Many thanks.


> One wonders, for example, why exactly one response (readstats) has a binary
> payload

My guess is history.  It's probably left over from before the mode6/mode7 
stuff got sorted out and Mills decided that mode6 should be all text.

You could fix that.  I'd probably wait until there is a good reason to add 
another command.


> The translation has turned up a weird bug in ntpd, however.  It turns out
> that in two mode 6 responses, reslist and ifstats, ntpd frequently sends
> bursts of binary garbage in the middle of what is otherwise good textual
> data.

That's probably a bug.

One of the complicated responses sends the slots within a line in random 
order and adds a garbage field name and value.  The comment said it was to 
keep the client side from making assumptions that would turn into constraints 
on the server side.  I think it's reslist.

-----------

How are you testing things?

I get this:

$ ./ntpq/pyntpq
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./ntpq/pyntpq", line 17, in <module>
    from ntp.packet import *
  File "/home/murray/ntpsec/play/ntpq/ntp/packet.py", line 16, in <module>
    from ntpc import lfptofloat
ImportError: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ntpc.so: undefined 
symbol: OBJ_sn2nid
$

I tried installing, but there is no pyntpq on my search path and I don't see 
it actually getting installed.

After installing, I get this:
$ ./ntpq/pyntpq
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./ntpq/pyntpq", line 18, in <module>
    from ntp.util import *
  File "/home/murray/ntpsec/play/ntpq/ntp/util.py", line 9, in <module>
    import ntp.ntpc
ImportError: No module named ntpc
$

-- 
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