Since the NTPv4 update, the detection of synchronization loops based on
the refid prevents a server to initialize its clock from its clients
after restart. Remove that part from the recommended configuration.
Also, mention the time smoothing feature.
The Linux secure computing (seccomp) facility allows a process to
install a filter in the kernel that will allow only specific system
calls to be made. The process is killed when trying to make other system
calls. This is useful to reduce the kernel attack surface and possibly
prevent kernel exploits when the process is compromised.
Use the libseccomp library to add rules and load the filter into the
kernel. Keep a list of system calls that are always allowed after
chronyd is initialized. Restrict arguments that may be passed to the
socket(), setsockopt(), fcntl(), and ioctl() system calls. Arguments
to socketcall(), which is used on some architectures as a multiplexer
instead of separate socket system calls, are not restricted for now.
The mailonchange directive is not allowed as it calls sendmail.
Calls made by the libraries that chronyd is using have to be covered
too. It's difficult to determine which system calls they need as it may
change after an upgrade and it may depend on their configuration (e.g.
resolver in libc). There are also differences between architectures. It
can all break very easily and is therefore disabled by default. It can
be enabled with the new -F option.
This is based on a patch from Andrew Griffiths <agriffit@redhat.com>.
Adds option -P to chronyd on MacOS X which can be used to enable the
thread time constraint scheduling policy. This near real-time scheduling
policy removes a 1usec bias from the 'System time' offset.
Add maxdistance directive to set the maximum root distance the sources
are allowed to have to be selected. This is useful to reject NTPv4
sources that are no longer synchronized and report large dispersion.
The default value is 3 seconds.
Allow multiple hostnames/addresses separated by comma to be specified
with the -h option. Hostnames are resolved to up to 16 addresses. When
connecting to an address fails or no reply is received, try the next
address in the list.
Set the default value for the -h option to 127.0.0.1,::1.
Don't install chrony.txt in make install to avoid dependency on makeinfo
since chrony.texi is prepared by configure to set the default paths in
the documentation.
Sources that are not specified as a pool and have a name (i.e. not
specified by an IP address or added from chronyc) will be replaced with
a newly resolved address of the name when they become unreachable or
falseticker too.
The second form configures the automatic stepping, similarly to the
makestep directive. It has two parameters, stepping threshold (in
seconds) and number of future clock updates for which will be the
threshold active. This can be used with the burst command to quickly
make a new measurement and correct the clock by stepping if needed,
without waiting for chronyd to complete the measurement and update the
clock.
The minsamples and maxsamples directives now set the default value,
which can be overriden for individual sources in the server/peer/pool
and refclock directives.
A new option can be now used in the pool directive: maxsources sets the
maximum number of sources that can be used from the pool, the default
value is 4.
On start, when the pool name is resolved, chronyd will add up to 16
sources, one for each resolved address. When the number of sources from
which at least one valid reply was received reaches maxsources, the
other sources will be removed.
The pool directive can be used to configure chronyd for a pool of NTP
servers (e.g. pool.ntp.org). The name is expected to resolve to multiple
addresses which change over time.
On start, a source will be added for each resolved address. When a
source from the pool is unreachable or marked as falseticker, chronyd
will try to replace the source with a newly resolved address of the
pool.
The minimum interval between replacements is currently set to 244
seconds to avoid frequent DNS requests.
