On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 05:10:09PM -0700, Darren.Reed at Sun.COM wrote: > Nicolas Williams wrote: > >Heck, we could do something fairly different that does not involve > >modifying any NTP code. For example: > > > [...] > > Indeed, the above does need to be considered...and even > the architecture of the proposed solution (a daemon to > manage another daemon?) but...
BTW, one reason to pursue the above might be that it avoids the code contribution issue. Not because we don't want to contribute it (hey, it will be published -- it is _Open_Solaris), but because contributing code changes can sometimes be very difficult. Or because writing clean code is easier than modifying old code, or whatever. First let's get the semantics straight. What David proposes comes closest to what I think is right: let the apps set their own tolerance for time skew and don't block booting. This means that the NTP service comes online immediately, boot proceeds, and things that can't stand unsynchronized time refuse to work, mark their services degraded, scream on /dev/console, or whatever is appropriate for them. And we even get to represent tolerances in SMF (which is what I wanted when I said that I wished SMF could represent analog dependencies). I think we'll probably converge on this. Then we can figure out other stuff. And no, having daemons watching daemons is not necessarily weird. That's what svc.startd does, in its own way. There's something to be said for treating a complex piece of software as a black box. Nico --
