Bug 29538 – ntpd doesn't shut down correctly.

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Don Garrett 2003-09-24 14:16:58 UTC]

I currently have ntp-4.1.2 intalled. /etc/conf.d/ntpd lists NTPDATE_CMD="ntpd"
as suggested by the comments in that file.

  ntp.conf is slightly customized from the default to point to my primary time
server. While adjusting this file, I found that /etc/initd/ntpd restart wasn't
causing my changes to take effect. I think noticed that I had a long list of
'ntpd' processes running.

  A little investigation showed that "/etc/initd/ntpd stop" leaves a process
named ntpd running. If I kill the extra process before starting ntpd again,
everything seems to be fine. If I never stop or restart ntpd after boot,
everything seems to be fine.

  I briefly dug into the init scripts myself, and saw nothing wrong. the scripts
seem to be very easy to work with and configure, but it wasn't obvious (in my 20
second search) how to debug this kind of problem. However, if I can help in any
way, please let me know.


  Here is a dump of command line interaction that should show what I mean.

hammer$ps aux | grep ntp
root      3235  0.0  0.1  1428  444 pts/0    S    16:05   0:00 grep ntp

hammer$/etc/init.d/ntpd start
 * Initializing clock via ntpd...                                         [ ok ]
 * Starting ntpd...                                                       [ ok ]

hammer$ps aux | grep ntp
root      3278  0.1  0.5  2004 1996 ?        SL   16:05   0:00 ntpd
root      3282  0.0  0.5  2008 2000 ?        SL   16:05   0:00 /usr/bin/ntpd -p
/var/run/ntpd.pid
root      3284  0.0  0.5  2136 2088 ?        S    16:05   0:00 /usr/bin/ntpd -p
/var/run/ntpd.pid
root      3286  0.0  0.1  1428  444 pts/0    S    16:05   0:00 grep ntp

hammer$/etc/init.d/ntpd stop
 * Stopping ntpd...                                                       [ ok ]

hammer$ps aux | grep ntp     
root      3278  0.1  0.5  2004 1996 ?        SL   16:05   0:00 ntpd
root      3317  0.0  0.1  1428  444 pts/0    S    16:05   0:00 grep ntp


  Sometimes there is an additional "/usr/bin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid" for a
few seconds after the stop command has returned, but the "ntpd" process never
shuts down until killed. /var/run/ntpd.pid will contain the id of the first of
the two processes that list "-p /var/run/ntpd.pid" on their command line.

[Comment 1 SpanKY 2003-09-25 20:20:12 UTC]

your config files are out of date

`emerge ntp --noconfmem ; etc-update` and then try again

also, make sure there are no ntpd servers running before you utilize the
init script ...

root@vapier 0 root # ps -A | grep ntp | grep -v grep
root@vapier 0 root # /etc/init.d/ntpd start
 * Starting ntpd...                                                  [ ok
]
root@vapier 0 root # ps -A | grep ntp | grep -v grep
21544 ?        00:00:00 ntpd
root@vapier 0 root # /etc/init.d/ntpd stop 
 * Stopping ntpd...                                                  [ ok
]
root@vapier 0 root # ps -A | grep ntp | grep -v grep
root@vapier 0 root # 

[Comment 2 Don Garrett 2003-09-26 00:36:23 UTC]

You are correct about the cause of the problem.

I saw the warning message saying "Please setup ntpd via/etc/conf.d/ntp" and
made what seemed like the correct modification from ntpdate to ntpd. All
I needed to do was to comment out the line that triggered the warning.

Thanks!