[Sugar-devel] Clocks on XOs

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 9:54 AM, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
>> NetworkManager used to call ntpdate when it setup a connection.  Was that an
>> OLPC addition?

Yes, although it's now present in litl's software builds as well.

> We figured out that the ntp package has never been present on the XO
> images.

It was ntpdate, which was smaller than the whole ntp package.

> There's no way to practical way to implement effective anti-theft
> without taking away root from the user. And once we take away root
> access, we've also taken away olpc's principle #1: child ownership.

See my recent message on this topic.

Apart from the hardware fix (which avoids RTC dependency altogether),
it is also possible to separate most of root's authority from the RTC
priviledge.  Installing software, for example, requires root access to
the filesystem, but not access to the RTC.

>> What are the school servers doing to keep their clocks reasonable?
>
> They're using ntp, with the Fedora pool of ntp servers.

You should probably apply for your own pool:
  http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/vendors.html#open-source

It's pretty painless, and makes you a better netizen.

>> > Why aren't we using ntp?
>>
>> ntp is probably overkill for XOs.  Besides, who would want to give up that
>> much ram?  On top of that, ntpd doesn't get along with power saving mode.

That's why you use ntpdate.
  --scott

-- 
                         ( http://cscott.net/ )