Description of Problem: When dateconfig adds a server to /etc/ntp.conf, it also incorrectly sets up a fudge line -- server ntp.example.com # Correct fudge ntp.example.com stratum 10 # ERROR Only local drivers should have a fudge line, and this fudge line is trying to force NTP to treat that server as if it were at stratum 10 rather than its real stratum. The stock ntp.conf file uses a 127.127.1.n LCL clock driver which needs this fudge line to tell the world that it's a not using a good quality time source. Luckily, NTP currently ignores this misconfiguration. In addition, the program silently uncomments the 'multicastclient' line, which probably should be used with authentication to avoid possible clock skew attacks from rogue multicast servers. It might make sense to make activation of 'multicastclient' a checkbox option. Expected Results: When setting a remote server with dateconfig(8), the fudge line should be deleted.
I'll look into this.
Sorry that it's taken so long to address this bug. I have been porting dateconfig to Python2.2/GTK2, so that's taken the focus lately. I have reworked the way dateconfig writes the ntp.conf file so that changes made to the file by hand will be preserved. I have modified dateconfig so that the "fudge" line will not be written, so that should address the first part of the bug report. As for the multicastclient part, I can't think of a good way to present it without complicating the interface. There are lots of things you can do manually in ntp.conf that dateconfig won't let you do, and I think that if you need to do those kind of customizations, it's better to edit the file by hand. The ntp.conf file that the ntp RPM installs has the multicastclient line commented out, so dateconfig will leave that line commented out. I've pushed a new dateconfig through the build system, so a new dateconfig will appear in Rawhide soon. Of course, you'll need Python2.2, Gtk2, pygtk2, and a whole bunch of other packages to get it to run. All this package churn should be fixed by the next Red Hat Linux release, so all this will run smoothly someday soon. Thanks for your report.