REFCLOCK rises again

[Matthew Selsky]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2019 at 12:46:29PM -0600, Richard Laager via devel wrote:
> On 3/5/19 12:45 PM, Gary E. Miller via devel wrote:
> > Yo Eric!
> > 
> > On Tue, 5 Mar 2019 02:11:52 -0500
> > "Eric S. Raymond via devel" <devel at ntpsec.org> wrote:
> > 
> >>> That would leave the configure option.  I've never used it.  
> >>
> >> I think we can justify both removals on security. If Mode 6 is a
> >> read-only channel there can never be any exploits over it.  That's
> >> a significant gain in provable bulletproofness.
> >>
> >> You want to reconfure your ntpd?  Bounce it. This won't happen often.
> > 
> > Ugh, wrong.  I've got to agree with Achim here.  It takes days for
> > my ntpd's to converge, that is why you don't bounce it often.
> 
> How often are you reconfiguring your running ntpd today, and by what
> mechanism (i.e. are you using the Mode 6 writable parameter(s) being
> proposed for removal)?

I reconfigure ntpd periodically.

I push a new ntp.conf via my configuration management system and then restart ntpd.  My reconvergence takes ~10 minutes for stratum-1 clocks since my maxpoll is 2 seconds.  Saving more state so that the reconvergence is faster would be great, but the current performance is sufficient.

Reconfiguring via ntpq is not something I would ever use at scale.  This mostly seems useful for tinkering/debugging.


Thanks,
-Matt