Bug#318664: [Pkg-nagios-devel] Bug#285554: acknowledged by developer (check_smtp update)

[Steve Greenland]

On 11-Oct-05, 03:03 (CDT), sean finney <seanius at debian.org> wrote: 
> hi jeroen, steve,
> 
> if i understand correctly, there are two issues:
> 
> - offset of zero being treated as an error
> - usage of ntpdate
> 
> for the former, i believe this issue is resolved in the latest version
> of ntp.

Yeah, that looks good. Thanks.

> for the latter, is using ntpdate really a problem? jeroen: you claim
> that ntpdate is deprecated, but is it? afaik it's still quite useful
> in many situations, including this case.

Regarding deprecation, see http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/ntpdate.html,
where the first line reads:

    "Disclaimer: The functionality of this program is now available
    in the ntpd program. See the -q command line option in the ntpd -
    Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon page. After a suitable period
    of mourning, the ntpdate program is to be retired from this
    distribution."

But as I wrote in the initial bug report, the whole concept of using
offset from the Nagios server to determine the quality of time keeping
on the remote server is misguided. What is interesting is whether or not
the remote server is synced with its peer(s). Ntpq gives you that info.

But, as they say on the kernel list, -ENOPATCH, so as far as I'm
concerned, you can close this report.

Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland
    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net