[clug] forcing ntpdate timeout with no network

[Ben Nizette]

Hey Dale,

On Mon, 2009-11-02 at 14:33 +1100, Dale Shaw wrote:
> Does your NTP configuration file reference an IP address or a name?
> Maybe the delay is name lookup-related, rather than NTP. If that's the
> case, you could play with resolv.conf.

Tried both, both behave the same

> 
> Have you considered running ntpd as a daemon (only)? 

Yeah but...

> I realise this
> means it stays resident in memory and may bleat away in the background
> when it can't sync time, but at least it's not blocking/delaying
> bootup. Not sure I really understand the benefit of an ntpdate-on-boot
> on a system with a real time clock.

... don't have an RTC :-D  It's a little embedded board and quite poorly
designed; I've ensured the next revision will be all clock'd up but
doesn't help just yet.

>  Another option may be a periodic
> cron job/script with a simple "do I have network connectivity?" check
> at the start.

Not a bad option

> 
> Lastly, your problem may be distribution/release specific, so it may
> help to provide those details. I found references to some ntpdate bugs
> but they were all distro-specific and quite old so I didn't bother
> referencing them.

No distro - the half-dozen apps on this embedded board I've just
compiled myself and scp'd across - except scp, kernel and shell which
were transferred by rather more laborious means ;-)

The ntpdate version is 4.2.4p5 which afaik is pretty recent..

Thx,
	--Ben.

> 
> cheers,
> Dale