Tk Library Source Code

time.tcl fails to catch a timeout on the TCP socket
connect, though it handles the UDP situation correctly.
 When used in TCP mode, either without the UDP package
loaded or by specifying -protocol tcp, if there is
nothing listening on the port of the specified server,
the program ends with "connection refused".

Also - this package is MISREPRESENTED. It does NOT
implement the Network Time Protocol, RFC 1305, port
123, nor does it claim to. It implements RFC 868, the
system-independent time protocol, port 37, often
implemented with other "simple server" protocols, like
echo, chargen, and so forth (on Unix-derived systems,
right in inetd). Whoever registered this within the tcl
offering as NTP didn't do their homework.

To make matters worse, if you really connect this thing
to the REAL ntp on port 123, it doesn't recognize the
fact, and it returns a WRONG VALUE. If I get time, I'll
see if I can get it to return an error instead of a
wrong value, but with the early, simple protocols,
that's not always practical. I will also see how
difficult it would be to get a value from the REAL NTP,
though I'm not going to attempt to implement the
convergence algorithms, just grab the time - though
that isn't quite what it was intended for.

Logged In: YES 
user_id=984964

Thanks for applying the patch!  As for the rest, sorry - I
confused "an" NTP with "THE" NTP. <sheepish grin>

Logged In: YES 
user_id=202636

Patch applied.

It's not misrepresented. The Network Time Protocols module
in tcllib is intended to collect implementations of such
protocols. The first one in happens to be RFC 868 TIME as is
clearly stated at the top of both the man page and the tcl
code itself.

Somewhere I have 90% of an implementation of RFC 1035 but it
hasn't gone in yet.

I'll see about checking the protocol -- although I don't
think RFC 868 can really handle that.

File Added - 78104: time.tcl-patch