[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#422347: Packaging ntpq seperately

[Josip Rodin]

On Fri, Jul 07, 2017 at 09:01:35AM +0200, Bernhard Schmidt wrote:
> > Yes, it's common to set up a network service in a way that only localhost
> > will access it. No, that doesn't conflict with the idea that server software
> > goes into server software packages and client software goes into client
> > software packages.
> 
> Well, patches accepted, but ntpq is not really the client for ntp (or
> the ntp protocol). It can be compared to a control program, which is
> often inside the server package (i.e. unbound-control in unbound).

I thought of responding to this by saying I could be persuaded to this
argument in the case of ntpdc, which resembles unbound-control, or rndc,
in that it actually exerts control over ntpd, yet ntpq was just a query
program that monitors ntpds rather than controls them...

But then I noticed that ntpq included commands like saveconfig,
config-from-file, ... And, conversely, ntpdc includes numerous *stats and
*info commands. It's hard to argue any matter of principle when
the underpinnings of the matter appear devoid of it.

Since nobody remembers the etch upgrade that had broken this, I guess the
only remaining argument would be practicality mentioned by the submitter of
#582128 - they want to run ntpq and ntpdc from a machine that has chrony
installed. That's severity wishlist rather than normal, though, because of
the lack of precedent with the aforementioned rndc and unbound-control.

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