Ntppool-agent test version 4.1.0 available in deb/rpm repositories

Monitoring Operators
1

I note that a version 4.1.0 of the ntppool-agent package is available in the test repositories for deb and rpm packages.

Does anybody know what the updates/changes are?

The GitHub repository has a branch with activity that seems related to the migration from MySQL to PostgreSQL that Ask put on his agenda after the various recent outages related to the database.

Will this new package be compatible with the production system? As the package name, and the name of the binary, are the same for both the production and test packages, only one can be installed at any one time in my understanding. I.e., if the test package binary were not compatible with the production system, one would need to avoid updating any monitors registered in both the production and test/beta site for the time being.

2

At least there seems to be a packaging change: ntppool-agent obsoletes ntppool-monitor, ie. if you have an old (probably disabled and unused by now) ntppool-monitor installation, it will get removed.

I have now updated my test-only monitors to 4.1.0 and everything seems to be running fine.

ntppool-agent talks to the pool management servers via API calls. I’d expect the API to remain the same even if the backend database gets changed at some point. I’d also expect any new versions to be compatible with both testing and production environments. I’ll likely update my production monitor servers to the new version in the next few days, unless some new information comes up.

1 Like
3

It doesn’t come with apt yet.

I’m at 4.0.5 is that considered old?

I was expecting it to be installed via apt.

4

Was too slow to disable auto-update from the test repository on two of my monitors, and they already got upgraded. Working fine as well as far as I can see. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

5

Now, there is version 4.1.1 available.

3 Likes
6

Does anybody else get

“W: GPG error: https://pkgs.ntppool.org/apt InRelease: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY B5810683F983E1EC”

when trying to update from the repo? The above url was provided as part of the monitor/agent process, iirc. However, when accessing it manually, I only get a 404 response. Any pointers?

7

@floppy Is it a new setup or old? I enabled signing in the apt repository and naively expected that existing configurations would just carry on. Maybe that’s not the case!

There are updated instructions at https://builds.ntppool.dev/repo/ that’ll also install the signing key.

8

Now, there is version 4.1.1 available.

Sorry I didn’t post release notes for v4.1.0 or v4.1.1. No real changes in the client, just packaging to disable the old ntppool-monitor (the v3) instances that might still be running as none of them are active in the system anymore.

The API and scorer had some minor tweaks.

I’ve been working on migrating the whole system to Postgres (from MySQL), so most of the work the last months have been on branches related to that.

1 Like
11

@ask Thank you for answering! It was an “older” setup (a few months maybe). So the new instructions completely were missed out by me. Following them fixed the situation for me.

Thanks!

1 Like
12

I noticed…as my APT was all over me :rofl:

Monitors/APT are fixed again…even added an IPv6 monitor, just saw one of my servers had little to do, so time to make it work hard for the money I spend on it :upside_down_face:

13

There is an issue with the ntppool-test repository (maybe with the production one too).
It is clearly visible on openSUSE tumbleweed, probably on other rpm based systems there is no such error reported.

tumbleweed:~ # zypper --non-interactive dist-upgrade --from ntppool-test
Building repository 'NTP Pool test builds' cache .............................................................................[done]
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Computing distribution upgrade...

Problem: 1: problem with the installed ntppool-agent-4.1.1-1.aarch64
 Solution 1: install ntppool-agent-4.1.1-1.aarch64 from vendor  (no vendor) 
  replacing ntppool-agent-4.1.1-1.aarch64 from vendor NTP Pool Project
 Solution 2: keep obsolete ntppool-agent-4.1.1-1.aarch64

Choose from above solutions by number or cancel [1/2/c/d/?] (c): c
tumbleweed:~ #

The rpm package itself contains the vendor information (vendor NTP Pool Project above):

tumbleweed:~ # rpm -q --queryformat '%{VENDOR}\n' ntppool-agent
NTP Pool Project
tumbleweed:~ #

However, the repository metadata has no vendor information (vendor (no vendor) above):

tumbleweed:~ # curl -s 'https://pkgs-test.ntppool.org/yum/repodata/primary.xml' | grep '<vendor>'
tumbleweed:~ #

When making the repository, you may want to generate the vendor metadata, to have something like that in the repodata/primary.xml file for the ntppool-agent rpm package:

<vendor>NTP Pool Project</vendor>
14

Hm – the repository is built by https://gemfury.com ; I don’t obviously see an option to changing this in their UI (and there are too many other things to do that I’ll want to build the repository locally).