I dunno if this is upstream or not since I don't have any RHEL5
% rpm -qf /sbin/dhclient-script
dhclient-3.0.5-7.el5
This section of code appears to have a bug (around line 411)
elif [ -n "$new_ntp_servers" ] && [ -e /etc/ntp.conf ]; then
save_previous /etc/ntp.conf
/bin/egrep -v '(^[\ \ ]*(server|fudge))|(generated by /sbin/dhclient-script)'< /etc/ntp.conf.predhclient > /etc/ntp.conf
echo '# servers generated by /sbin/dhclient-script' >> /etc/ntp.conf
localClocks=(`/bin/egrep '^[\ \ ]*server[\ \ ]+127\.127' /etc/ntp.conf.predhclient | while read s addr rest; do echo $addr; done`)
localClockFudge="`/bin/egrep '^[\ \ ]*fudge[\ \ ]+127\.127' /etc/ntp.conf.predhclient`";
for s in $new_ntp_servers ${localClocks[@]};
do
echo 'server '$s >> /etc/ntp.conf;
done
echo "$localClockFudge" >> /etc/ntp.conf;
if [ -x /usr/bin/diff ] && /usr/bin/diff -q /etc/ntp.conf /etc/ntp.conf.predhclient >/dev/null 2>&1; then
: ;
else
/sbin/service ntpd condrestart >/dev/null 2>&1
fi;
fi
fi;
The problem is that if there are no "fudge' lines in the existing ntp.conf
then localClockFudge will be empty, and this will cause a blank line
to be appended to the end of the new ntp.conf; diff will then think the
file has changed and so ntpd will be restarted. Over time a large
number of blank lines will be prepended to the ntp.conf because of the
initial egrep statement.
--
rgds
Stephen