Do you really want to special-case every single broken network setup
under the sun?

(And does any networking client apart from connman support this? I think
the usual suspects in corporate networks – namely Windows and maybe RHEL
with NetworkManager – don't.)

On 2015-03-24 04:38, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
> Hi Tore,
> 
>>>> But if the gateway does is unable to provide you internet
>>>> connectivity, the chances of it being able to provide a usable NTP
>>>> service is pretty much next to nil anyway.
>>>
>>> not in a corporate environment where you might have a central DHCP,
>>> but you might to use the NTP server closest to you.
>>>
>>>> Note that my patches  does not preclude the DHCP server from
>>>> advertising the gateway (or any other node) as an NTP server. If it
>>>> does, then the FallbackTimeservers doesn't come into play, the
>>>> advertised NTP server(s) will be what connman ends up using no
>>>> matter what.
>>>
>>> Falling back to the gateway as NTP server is when the DHCP server
>>> does not provide any NTP servers. As stated above, there are
>>> corporate enterprise networks where this make total sense.
>>
>> Hi Marcel,
>>
>> Okay, I admit it is possible to intentionally build a corporate network
>> where it would be beneficial to treat DHCP option 3 essentially as an
>> additional option 42 (I was thinking mostly about broken residental
>> gateways when writing my previous issue). That said, I am really at a
>> loss as to why someone would actually want to do so...
>>
>> First: Why exactly wouldn't the administrator of the DHCP server in
>> question use option 42 to advertise the NTP server address to the
>> clients (which of course could be the exactly same address as the
>> default router address he advertises in option 3)?
> 
> that is pretty simple. The DHCP server are centrally managed. However they do 
> not want NTP going through the whole network. So it should terminate at the 
> gateway. I have seen this kind of networks. So they exist and we have used 
> ConnMan in these networks.
> 
>> Second: If you're an administrator of a corporate DHCP server and want
>> your clients to use the default gateway as the NTP server, there's no
>> way around using option 42 anyway - because, to the best of my
>> knowledge, connman is the only connection manager / OS to blindly
>> assume that any default router will also provide NTP service.
> 
> Forgot what an administrator might thing. This is a reality and so get on 
> board with it.
> 
>> Third: If you're an administrator of a corporate DHCP server and you
>> *do* use option 42 to make your client use some other NTP server (i.e.,
>> not the default router), you certainly do *not* want connman to
>> second-guess that and blindly add the router as an NTP server anyway.
>> This is what I noticed happening in my network, and what prompted me to
>> submit an issues/send patches.
> 
> This one sounds like a bug in ConnMan. Worth while fixing.
> 
>> I could of course improve this third issue by making connman not add
>> the default router as an NTP server if option 42 was received. However
>> IMHO that would only make the behaviour "less wrong", it would
>> certainly not be "right". The bottom line is that the NTP service and
>> default router addresses are two completely independent things that
>> should not be confused, just like you shouldn't confuse the addresses
>> of the DNS service, DHCP service, or any of the other 100+ different
>> things it is possible to advertise in DHCP.
> 
> If the DHCP provides you an option 42, then second guessing that is wrong. In 
> that case only the FallbackTimeservers should be allowed to do an overwrite.
> 
>> While it is certainly possible to build networks where multiple
>> services are provided by the same node (and there's nothing wrong with
>> doing so), you cannot assume that this is going to be true in the
>> general case or even in a majority of cases.
> 
> We can argue this for a long time. However I am not breaking existing 
> behavior. As I said before, you can have a main.conf option to just disable 
> it in your installations.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Marcel
> 
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> 

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen, / Best Regards,
Sven Schwedas
Systemadministrator
TAO Beratungs- und Management GmbH | Lendplatz 45 | A - 8020 Graz
Mail/XMPP: [email protected] | +43 (0)680 301 7167
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