1.106. ntp

An updated ntp package that fixes various bugs and provides an enhancement is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is used to synchronize a computer's time with a referenced time source.

This updated ntp package includes fixes for the following bugs:

* The ntpd man pages suggested that the "-L" command option could be issued without an argument. However, the user needs to define the virtual interfaces as arguments of the option. This update corrects the ntp help page. (BZ#460434)

* Prior to this update, if the /usr directory was mounted on an NFS file system, the ntpd service could not be started before the netfs service. This update moves the NTP applications to the /sbin directory so the user may change the ntpd startup priority to start prior to the netfs service. Note that if you wish to mount NFS version 4 with Kerberos authentication, you should consider changing the ntpd startup priority to start prior to the netfs service. Otherwise authentication may fail due to the non-synchronized date. (BZ#470945)

* Prior to this update, verifying the ntp package with the "rpm -V" command failed on the package configuration file if the configuration file had changed. However, changes to the configuration file should not impact the verification test. This update adapts the spec file and the package verify test passes successfully. (BZ#481151)

* The ntpd daemon could terminate unexpectedly due to a low memory lock limit. With this update, the memory lock limit has been doubled. (BZ#575874)

* The "-q" command line option causes the ntpd service to exit immediately after the clock is set. Prior to this update, the man page ntpd(8) did not document that this only occurs if there are servers configured for ntpd to set the clock against. The user could conclude that ntpd was misbehaving when it did not quit if run with the "-q" switch but with no configured servers. With this update, the ntpd(8) man page notes that "ntpd -q" only exits if used to set the clock with configured servers. (BZ#591838)

* Prior to this update, the ntpd daemon could terminate unexpectedly with a segmentation fault on a machine with more than 512 local IP addresses. This happened because of a limit set for scanning. With this update, the limit scan has been changed to scan to the maximum number of interfaces and the ntpd daemon no longer crashes in such circumstances. (BZ#661934)

* Prior to this update, the ntp-keygen(8) patch man page contained multiple typos. This update fixes the typos. (BZ#664524, BZ#664525)

* The "ntpstat" command printed an incorrect maximum error estimate. This occurred because the "time correct to within" value did not include the root delay. With this update, the value includes the root delay and the displayed "time correct to within" value is correct. (BZ#679034)

In addition, this updated ntp package provides the following enhancement:

* Prior to this update, the ntpd daemon did not allow the specification of multiple interfaces which it should be listening on. With this update, the user can define multiple interfaces the daemon should be listening on. (BZ#528799)

All ntp users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which resolves these issues and provides this enhancement.