From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.1) Gecko/20031114 Description of problem: I installed Fedora Core 1 fresh and replaced the file /etc/ntp.conf with the working copy from a previous Red Hat 8 install. When I restarted ntpd it opened firewall holes for all of the server entries, but ntpd only recognized my network router - my router was the only time source specified by IP address. I was able to get ntpd to recognize the servers by replacing the hostname with the numeric IP address in dotted-decimal format. originally the server names in /etc/ntp.conf appeared as follows: restrict clock2.redhat.com mask 255.255.255.255 nomodify notrap noquery server clock2.redhat.com restarting the ntpd service resulted in the following error in /var/log/messages: May 6 12:54:07 vhg ntpd[2949]: getnetnum: "clock2.redhat.com" invalid host number, line ignored NTP was unable to reach the host and rejected it for purposes of time synchronization. I was able to work around the issue by changing ntp.conf as follows: restrict 209.132.176.4 mask 255.255.255.255 nomodify notrap noquery server 209.132.176.4 Note that 209.132.176.4 is the IP address returned by dig for clock2.redhat.com. With this change restarting the ntpd service results in no error message, time synchronizes. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): ntp-4.1.2-5 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. install fedora core 1 2. place the following lines in /etc/ntp.conf: restrict clock2.redhat.com mask 255.255.255.255 nomodify notrap noquery server clock2.redhat.com 3. start (or restart) NTP service (service ntpd [start|restart]) Actual Results: ntpd does not resolve hostname, error message written to /var/log/messages, ntpd lists server as unreachable internally, does not use it for synchronization. Expected Results: ntpd finds server by hostname, accepts it as a valid time source, evaluates its responses it in time synchronization algorithm. Additional info: This behavior does not seem to agree with the NTP documentation as found on http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/notes.html (search for "Configuring Your Server or Client" for the relevant section of the page): "Note the use of host names, although host addresses in dotted-quad notation can also be used. It is always preferable to use names rather than addresses, since over time the addresses can change, while the names seldom change." It also represents a change from Red Hat 8's behavior, where using the hostname works just fine. I suspect that this may be related to bug # 109638: ntptrace missing. If ntpd is written to use ntptrace to resolve hostnames then removal of ntptrace would prevent ntpd from resolving the time hosts.
I've upgraded to Fedora Core 2, and hostnames work in ntp.conf again (ntp version 4.2.0-7).