Re: [chrony-users] hostnames vs. IP address in chrony.conf

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Ed W <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 10/31/2012 09:03:14:
>
> On 31/10/2012 10:36, Tomalak Geret'kal wrote:
> > On 31/10/2012 10:35, Miroslav Lichvar wrote:
> >> On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 10:14:01AM +0000, Tomalak Geret'kal wrote:
> >>> Again, chrony doesn't need the TTL. Caching is handled by the
> >>> resolver.
> >>> getaddrinfo() blocking is a more concrete problem to solve - good
> >>> spot.
> >> I don't think getaddrinfo() does any caching, that has to be done in
> >> nscd or a local DNS server.
> >>
> > I didn't claim otherwise!
> >
> > Tom
>
> Then you need to be very careful that millions of routers out there
> don't suddenly start issuing DNS requests every few seconds because
> someone upgraded a firmware to include this new version of chrony and
> didn't notice the change in behaviour (not all chinese/taiwanese router
> board builders will read the english release notes...)


Please don't let me get blamed for starting that avalanche!  :-)
 
> Remember unlike windows its much more normal to not have any dns caching
> on linux and rely on the nearest upstream (hopefully inside your
> infrastructure)


My distros (Fedora and previously RHL) have done local caching for as long as I can remember.  I'd be surprised to see one that doesn't actually.

> I see that this is a very dangerous change.


I'm inclined to agree with this now.  I posted the Q because chrony's behavior seemed at odds with most network services, but I can clearly see now there are some very good reasons for that.  In our case, we've got our own internal radio-clock server so we're not using pool.ntp.org, but I certainly realize many installs our going to be pointing to some round-robin DNS setup.

IMHO I think the best strategy forward would be just leave things as they are, but perhaps add some warnings to the documentation and perhaps even run-time logs that the name resolution is a one-time deal.  Run-time warnings could even point the user to a specific part of the docs explaining what was learned in this discussion.

In any case, I very much appreciate everyone's effort to make it better and/or explain the devil in the details.  Thank you all.
--
John Florian



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