Bug#993947: Time lost, /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf gets replaced with a default one

[Santiago Garcia Mantinan]

Package: systemd-timesyncd
Version: 247.3-6
Severity: important

Hi!

On upgrade from Buster to Bullseye I have seen my machines, without Internet
ntp access, loose their time sync because of the upgrade.

On the upgrade to the new packages, the old /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf file
which specifies the right ntp servers to use, will get replaced with a default
one which will not work for a setup where Internet ntp access is not available.

Luckily the old file is left as /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf.dpkg-bak, so a
mv /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf.dpkg-bak /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf
and proper reloading will get things back to normal.

I don't know why this file is being replaced, this happened on all the
machines that had a modified timesyncd.conf file and the system never asked
if I wanted to override the setup or leave the old one, no choice was given,
it was just replaced and that's it.

If you feel that this is the right behaviour, I believe that we should at
least add a note on the Release Notes or similar.

Regards.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.0
  APT prefers stable-security
  APT policy: (990, 'stable-security'), (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-8-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=gl_ES.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=gl_ES.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages systemd-timesyncd depends on:
ii  adduser  3.118
ii  libc6    2.31-13
ii  systemd  247.3-6

systemd-timesyncd recommends no packages.

systemd-timesyncd suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information