add OpenRC service script and config file for ntp-daemon

[zyxhere]

Add OpenRC service script and a config file to go along with it, these are supposed to be installed to the init.d directory usually in /etc at /etc/init.d/ntpd-rs and /etc/conf.d/ntpd-rs respectively.

The user can customize ntp-daemon's -c and -l commands by editing the /etc/conf.d/ntpd-rs file

With this configuration OpenRC:

• starts ntpd-rs as RUST_LOG=info /usr/bin/ntp-daemon -c /etc/ntpd-rs/ntp.toml -l info
• as unprivileged user ntpd-rs:ntpd-rs
• with the capabilites cap_net_bind_service and cap_sys_time
• with NO_NEW_PRIVS enabled
• after the chosen networking service

But before the service actually starts OpenRC:

• validates that the config file is correct via ntp-ctl validate or fail to start
• checks and creates /var/lib/ntpd-rs, /run/ntpd-rs and /var/log/ntpd-rs as ntpd-rs:ntpd-rs if they don't exist

And if the service if restarted OpenRC:

• checks that the config file is correct first via ntp-ctl validate or else fail to restart with a broken config

And if the service is reloaded via OpenRC with rc-service ntpd-rs reload

• first check the config file is correct via ntp-ctl validate or fail to start

Thats all.

[zyxhere]

should we use daemon.notice instead? is ntpd-rs noisy on stdout or does it actually only give out important messages in which case I think we should use notice.

[davidv1992]

We are currently actively working to make ntpd-rs less noisy, so I think we should aspire to daemon.notice I think.

[zyxhere]

It would be more appropriate to log to a seperate log file then

[zyxhere]

Converting to draft, because of some bugs either in the script, OpenRC or ntpd-rs:

• The service fails to stop, I don't really know why but if I restart instead of stop then that works..., also if I comment out the stop_pre() function then it stops successfully. nevermind was missing a return 0
• ntpd-rs doesn't seem to be using /run/ntpd-rs at all so ntpc-tl status errors out with a Could not open socket at /var/run/ntpd-rs/observe: No such file or directory (os error 2), seems like a ntpd-rs bug.
• the /var/lib/ntpd-rs directory is also empty but that might be ok?

[davidv1992]

Thank you for providing this.

To answer some of your questions:
For the observation socket, we are currently in a fairly major migration, and have accepted that currently the main branch is not entirely functional. In particular, observability is in that spot right now where it isn't fully functional. For testing, it may be easier to use the 1.9 version for now.
As to the /var/lib/ntpd-rs folder, we don't currently use that.

[zyxhere]

On Thu, 2026-10-08 at 23:59 -0700, David Venhoek wrote: davidv1992 left a comment (pendulum-project/ntpd-rs#2526) Thank you for providing this. To answer some of your questions: For the observation socket, we are currently in a fairly major migration, and have accepted that currently the main branch is not entirely functional. In particular, observability is in that spot right now where it isn't fully functional. For testing, it may be easier to use the 1.9 version for now.

This *is* with v1.9

As to the /var/lib/ntpd-rs folder, we don't currently use that.

Thanks so should I remove the checkpath logic for it? Also the systemd service has https://github.com/pendulum-project/ntpd-rs/blob/d89fbb3916d1dc3a063c9d8813be026728951fce/docs/examples/conf/ntpd-rs.strict.service#L35 which is why I put the checkpath logic in the first place

[davidv1992]

Apologies, forgot we use it to store the cookie keys when running as an NTS server. That is configuration dependent though and will only happen when configured as described in the NTS guide. We include it in the example systemd file to make sure these configurations work out of the box.

As for the observability, which configuration are you testing with? It needs to configure an observability path for the socket to get created.

[zyxhere]

On Fri, 2026-10-09 at 00:58 -0700, David Venhoek wrote: davidv1992 left a comment (pendulum-project/ntpd-rs#2526) Apologies, forgot we use it to store the cookie keys when running as an NTS server. That is configuration dependent though and will only happen when configured as described in the NTS guide. We include it in the example systemd file to make sure these configurations work out of the box. As for the observability, which configuration are you testing with? It needs to configure an observability path for the socket to get created.

Thanks I didn't set observability-path, the toml file I used was https://codeberg.org/gentoo/gentoo/pulls/497/files#diff-de2e6f052625ce0f5a3b530f90ea655f7f63c522 ( I really should have looked more closely and that PR should just use the default ntp.toml file). I'll mark this PR as ready once I test everything is working correctly.