Re: Considering the removal of ntpdate

[José Luis Tallón <jltallon@adv-solutions.net>]

Florian Lohoff wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:30:36AM +0200, José Luis Tallón wrote:
>   
>>      - For Squeeze: a package "ntpdate" which depends on rdate and
>> provides a wrapper script, used to emulate ntpdate's main functionality
>> (set the system's clock) in terms of rdate and mark it as deprecated
>>
>>     - For Squeeze+1: just drop it
>>
>>
>> * I do use ntpdate "regularly" --every time I fiddle with my  system's
>> clock or check a customer's older server-- for the same purpose that
>> weasel gave before.
>>     
>
> rdate ist not a replacement for ntpdate - it does not use the ntp
> protocol but the time protocol (builtin inetd) - So making
> ntpdate depend on rdate is not a solution as it changes the protocol
> and i dont think all ntp servers also open/support the time protocol.
>
> flo@stereo:~$ egrep "^time|^ntp" /etc/services
> time            37/tcp          timserver
> time            37/udp          timserver
> ntp             123/tcp
> ntp             123/udp                         # Network Time Protocol
>   
$ apt-cache show rdate
[snip]
Description: sets the system's date from a remote host
 rdate displays and sets the local date and time from the host name
 or address given as the argument. The time source may be an RFC 868
 TCP protocol server, which is usually implemented as a built-in
 service of inetd(8), *or an RFC 2030 protocol SNTP/NTP server*. By
 default, rdate uses the RFC 868 TCP protocol.



I referred to the other possibility, which uses rdate as an (S)NTP client.