Call for testing of ntpd(8) automatic mode

Otto Moerbeek (otto@) has been working on improving the behaviour of ntpd(8) during system boot, especially for machines whose time is way off (e.g. for machines without a battery-backed clock (RTC)). One recently committed improvement dealt with the problem of bad time in a DNSSEC environment, but Otto is working on more changes in this area.

His latest diff will automatically correct time at start up if certain conditions are met:

• Only automatically change time during system boot (i.e. when securelevel(7) is 0)
• At least one constraint URL is configured
• Time doesn't move backward
• The offset is bigger than one minute
• ntpd is started without the -s flag

This should help especially those (cheaper) machines that lack an RTC, such as Raspberry Pi systems.

Now Otto needs the community to help him test his proposed diff, to shake out bugs and find corner cases that may need special handling. You can download the diff here.

Make sure to disable the '-s' flag, and then please test and report back to Otto