network services at boot (was Re: Boot charting)

Andy Rabagliati wrote:

>On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Jeremie Corbier wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Matthew East a écrit :
>>    
>>
>>>This to me would make more sense than running it at boot when loads of
>>>people don't have the internet up. In many cases, the ntpdate services
>>>doesn't fail quickly: it can keep searching for ages!
>>>
>>>Probably this idea has occurred to you guys before and you've rejected
>>>it for some reason, if so, please ignore me. But I think on the face of
>>>things it would be a sensible solution.
>>>      
>>>
>>It would be possible to use ntpd too. Think about guys who don't
>>shutdown their computers for months :)
>>    
>>
>
>ntpdate running at boot is better (for me) than yet-another-daemon
>running on my box all the time.
>
>Couldn't one check (via hal or something) if there is life (twinkly lights)
>on the network port before trying ntpdate and dhcpclient ?
>
>Cheers,    Andy!
>
>  
>
Sorry if this is not relevant.
What to do with ISP:s that blocks externas ntp-server (as University of 
Lund does) which makes to default ntp-server not work?
The user-experience is the same as dhcp blocking the boot for some time 
when there is no dhcpserver - it just sits there (although for a smaller 
amount of time).

You could argue that its not normal to block external ntp, and that I 
know nothing about, but isn't the situation in some way identical to the 
dhcp-problem during boot?

One solution might be, if dhcp etc are not run parallen during boot,  to 
take notice about services not functioning as wanted and
giving the user upon login a dialog about services that need to be 
re-configured or disabled or perhaps turn them off until user fixes it. 
This is what users would expect if it its not handled in another way - 
since if something went wrong during the boot the system should be 
clever enough to report it and let the user handle it (if its not 
handled in a way by the system that makes user-response not needed).
Perhaps problematic for those who for example plugged out the 
ethernet-cable and after the boot reconfigures the ethernet to something 
which
wont work when the user plugs the cable in.  But I dont think so.  A 
simple dialog about "The system could not find Internet connection 
(dhcp) during boot - we have turned it off (Networkcard via HAL) for now 
- go to network-admin(link/button) to turn it on if you want to." would 
be enough.

/Kent,  wanted to report about ntp-problems aswell - since bringing down 
the boot-time can be done for those with ntp-problems aswell, and every 
second counts in the end.