[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#489376: ntp: Please provide support for NTP server discovery using RFC 2782

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

Package: ntp
Version: 4.2.2.p4+dfsg-2
Severity: wishlist
User: debian-edu at lists.debian.org
Usertag: debian-edu

One issue with large scale deployment of Linux is the need to
configure each client.  It would be easier if the clients were able to
automatically derive their configuration using network services.  This
is successfully done with MS Active directory, where it uses DNS to
locate the LDAP servers, and then uses the LDAP rootDSE to figure out
the LDAP base.  The DNS feature is using the mechanism described in
RFC 2782 to find servies.

It would be great if NTP could locate the local NTP servers using the
same mechanism.  This one-liner show how the SRV record at _ntp._udp
can be used to locate the NTP servers:

  ntp_servers=$(host -N 2 -t srv _ntp._udp | rev | awk '/VRS/ {print $1}' | cut -d. -f2- | rev)

Please implement a way to enable this in NTP, preferably using debconf
preseeding to allow it to be set automatically at install time.

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen