Re: network manager dhcp ntp server issue

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2013-01-25 at 08:10 +0100, Ralf Habacker wrote:
> Am 25.01.2013 02:52, schrieb Pavel Simerda:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Ralf Habacker" <ralf habacker freenet de>
> >> The dispatcher script got the DHCP4_... variables (see appended log),
> >> but they do not are delivered to ntpd.
> > Good.
> >
> >> ntp servers are only delivered to ntpd with the appended
> >> networkmanager patch or by running network in "traditional if" mode.
> > Then SUSE folks need to distribute a proper dispatcher script with their NTP package.
> but ... why does it work with the appended patch ? Looks that there is 
> another way - networkmanager-build-in-way - to solve this issue. What is 
> bad with this patch so that it could not be applied  ?

Because NTP is not a core thing that should be handled specifically in
the code, because it's not necesary for IP configuration of the
interface.  It should be made available to clients via the API so they
can handle it the way they want, but we shouldn't be handling non-core
DHCP options specifically, just passing them on.  The same applies to
anything DHCP returns: WINS/NBNS, SIP, NTP, YellowPages, etc.  Adding
direct code for all those, when NetworkManager doesn't actually use them
internally in any way, clutters up the NM code for no point.

(WINS is an exception: that's been in the API since the beginning, so
we're not going to remove it now)

But we certainly want to make them available to external scripts.

Dan