From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) Description of problem: redhat-config-date does a name lookup on the NTP server name entered and enters the IP address in /etc/ntp.conf instead of the hostname. This breaks setups where the name resolves randomly to multiple IP addresses to balance the server-load. (e.g. ntp.uiuc.edu resolves randomly to 3 time providers). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): redhat-config-date-1.5.25-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Launch redhat-config-date 2. Check "Enable Network Time Protocol" 3. Enter, say, ntp.uiuc.edu for "Server", and hit "OK" Actual Results: /etc/ntp.conf should now contain an entry "server <IP-address>" Expected Results: /etc/ntp.conf should have contained "server ntp.uiuc.edu" instead Additional info:
Looks like redhat-config-date may also have to figure out the appropriate netmask for the "restrict" line from the list of IP addresses that the name resolves to.
Please see bug #70557 for an explanation of why we use the IP address on the server line instead of the hostname.
If my understanding is correct, redhat-config-date does a DNS lookup on the entered hostname since hostnames may be spoofed. I don't quite understand the reasoning, considering that IP spoofing is also possible. On a purely rhetorical note, why not enter the Hardware addresses instead of the IP addresses? Hostnames are supposed to provide a layer of abstraction over IP addresses, and as such are commonly used for purposes such as load balancing. Resolving breaks such applications. I'm not reopening the bug, as I'm not entirely sure if entering hostnames is necessarily a good thing either.