I didn't mean in anyway that ntp itself was appropriate but that a patched version of ntp might include another type of service which might
You mean a patched version of the NTP server? As far as I know ntp.ac.il is a Cisco router or somesuch. I don't see the point of patching NTP, of all protocols, to do this - you'll have to patch and maintain both servers and clients on many platforms. There are also no provisions in the protocol to add such info, as far as I remember it.
allow pushing the full timezone file through the ntp infrastructure once
NTP is a UDP protocol - you want to start pushing multi-Kb files through UDP?
(preferably when the times are decided each year) All this would require is that someone update ntp.ac.il for instance and give it the push command updating all the downstream ntp servers.
I am just hoping that maybe we can come up with something better than running an update script on N machines-
obviously those with 1-2 don't care but when you have 50-100 it's a major project every year.
I understand this completly (I've been through this myself when I admin'ed at HUJI CS), and you are certainly right with your concernes. I just think you are looking at the wrong direction. Existing tools will help you do a "pull" protocol (cron+ftp, for instance, BTW - NTP is a "pull" protocol too). If you'll get down to write a "push" protocol (a mistake, IMHO, since clients go up and down all the time and the server won't be able to track them all) then you'll have to write your own protocol, and by then I don't see the advantage of piggy-backing on NTP of all things.
Look at this in another way - just like you setup NTP clients on all the machines you are responsible for, setup another procedure to pull the timezone file.
yonah
Cheers,
--Amos
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