NTP Pool Agent v4.0.2

Monitoring Operators
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Fixed an unlikely crash on first setup in v4.0.1 and the RPM packaging issues mentioned elsewhere in v4.0.2.

If you have had servers verified in the pool for a long time you can add monitors following the instructions at manage monitors.

If the site says your servers haven’t been in the pool long enough, message myself and @apuls and we can see if we can make an exception.

It’s been great since yesterday watching the server score pages and seeing the system update the monitor / server pairings to give servers more local (typically) monitors.

v4.0.2

Packaging Improvements

  • RPM dependency alternatives: Enabled dependency alternatives for RPM packages to improve installation compatibility
  • APK dependency cleanup: Removed unnecessary APK package dependencies for Alpine Linux builds

Debugging Features

  • NTP query debugging: Added MONITOR_DEBUG_NTP_QUERIES environment variable for detailed NTP query logging

v4.0.1

Bug Fixes

  • Mutex crash fix: Updated common package dependency to resolve critical mutex-related crashes
  • Authentication fixes: Improved dual mTLS/JWT authentication support with proper RequestClientCert handling

API Changes

  • Legacy API blocking: Twirp API now blocked for monitors who upgraded to v4.0.0 and newer
5 Likes
Intention to enable IPv6 by default in 2017
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May I ask what are the APK packages for?

Besides please build 386 packages with GO386=softfloatif possible, to avoid SSE2 requirement and make really old machines able to help in the pool.

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APK packages

For Alpine Linux; though I don’t have a repository for it (haven’t looked into how much work that is).

Besides please build 386 packages with GO386=softfloatif possible

Yes, I imagine the slightly worse performance on slightly newer systems doesn’t matter for this. I put a test build at https://builds.ntppool.dev/ntppool-agent/builds/test/567/ntppool-agent_v4.0.2-567_linux_386.tar.gz

(more filenames in the checksums file).

1 Like
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I made a 4.0.3 release; other than the softfloat change all the changes are in the selection and scoring code.

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Well I still have illegal instruction error when trying to run 4.0.3 on my ancient Pentium3 machine. Without knowledge of gdb I cannot further investigate what the illegal instruction really is… Got stuck.

Regarding the –no-ipv6 flag, the agent simply refuses to work when ipv6 was administratively turned off in kernel, like the ipv6.disable=1 parameter or blacklisting in module options, came up with errors like this:

time=2025-08-12T12:09:24.579+08:00 level=WARN msg=“local-check failure” env=prod ip_version=v4 server=time.fu-berlin.de ip=130.133.1.10 err=“network: socket: address family not supported by protocol” trace_id=4605df7bc6198eb630331ff0237aae35 span_id=41585acee06871d7

So the only way to run the agent in ipv4-only machine is let the kernel obtain the link-local fe80:: inet6 address and run the agent with –no-ipv6 flag.