NTP is something I know a bit about.Yeah, ntpdate will do the job, and it's a good bit smaller than the full ntp-simple package.
The alternative you were thinking of *may* be "chrony".Both implement enough of the network time protocol (NTP) to do what you want.
However, keep in mind that NTP, by it's very nature, needs access to a network time server. The operative word here is "network". If you don't have access to the global internet, and you don't have an NTP server on your local network (or you're doing an install without any network connection at all for some reason) both ntpdate and chrony will fail. You need to think hard about what you want to do under those circumstances. Is it acceptable to have the d-i ask for the address of an NTP server at the same time as it's asking for other network parameters? For what it's worth, some DHCP servers will allow you the option to ask for the address of a preferred NTP server. But if you use this option, you need to think about what to do if it fails.
Doing something that will work in the easy cases is pretty straight- forward.
Getting the corner cases right is non-trivial. Rick On Jul 14, 2006, at 6:19 PM, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
* Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> [2006-07-14 23:27]:ntpdate doesn't set the hardware clock, so the only thing this would achieve is having a good clock while the installer runs. Is that useful?Yes, otherwise we e.g. end up with a filesystem that was modified in 1970 and e2fsck will complain on the next boot. Since I filed this bug, someone suggested that a tool other than ntp might be better since it's smaller. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name right now. I'm CCing -boot so other people can comment, but unless there are great ideas, I'm still interesting in having an ntp udeb. -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-boot-REQUEST@lists.debian.orgwith a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org