NTP users are strongly urged to take immediate action to ensure that their NTP daemons are not susceptible to being used in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Please also take this opportunity to defeat denial-of-service attacks by implementing Ingress and Egress filtering through BCP38.

ntp-4.2.8p15 was released on 23 June 2020. It addresses 1 medium-severity security issue in ntpd, and provides 13 non-security bugfixes over 4.2.8p13.

Please see the NTP Security Notice for vulnerability and mitigation details.

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Are you using Autokey in production? If so, please contact Harlan - he's got some questions for you.

Release Numbering Scheme

ntp4-5.0.0 (new)

Once ntp-4.2.8 has been released we will be changing to a new numbering system, one that is much closer to the one used before ntp-4.2.2.

DaveHart doesn't think the disease merits the pain associated with the cure, but he'll go along.

Initial Releases after 4.2.8:

Plan A

• The first development release will be ntp4-5.1.0
• The first stable release will be ntp4-5.2.0

Plan B

• The first development release will be ntp4-4.9.0
• The first stable release will be ntp4-5.0.0

Steve prefers Plan B. Harlan sees pros/cons with each, and is fine with Plan B.

Anybody else care to weigh in?

Syntax

Protocol_Version-Major_Version.Minor_Version.Point_Version[Release_Tags]

Point Version

An increasing number indicates a Point (i.e. incremental) Release.

The -stable release series point releases are used for bug fixes.

The -dev (development) release series point releases are incremental snapshot releases which checkpoint the development process.

Release Tags

[Special][Status]

Special

Tags not described here may be used for internal projects.

Status

For -stable, one of:

• -beta followed by an increasing number indicates a Beta release
• -RC followed by an increasing number indicates a Release Candidate

For -dev:

• -RC indicating a Release Candidate

Stable vs Development Releases

• Stable releases have an even Minor Release number
• Development releases have an odd Minor Release number

Examples

ntp4-5.1.142  NTP Protocol 4 v5.1.142 (development snapshot release)
ntp4-5.2.0    NTP Protocol 4 v5.2.0   (stable release, version 5.2 with no patches)
ntp4-5.2.2    NTP Protocol 4 v5.2.2   (stable release, version 5.2 with 2 patches)

ntp-4.2.2 thru ntp-4.2.8 (current)

The following release numbering scheme was implemented with the release of ntp-4.2.2 on June 6, 2006.

Syntax

Protocol_Version.Major_Version.Minor_Version[Release_Tags]

Release Tags

[Point][Special][Release Candidate]

Point

The letter p followed by an increasing number indicates a Point (i.e. incremental) Release.

The -stable release series point releases are used for bug fixes.

The -dev (development) release series point releases are incremental snapshot releases which checkpoint the development process.

Special

Tags not described here may be used for internal projects.

Release Candidate

The string -RC followed by an increasing number indicates a Release Candidate.

Stable vs Development Releases

• Stable releases have an even Minor Release number
• Development releases have an odd Minor Release number

Examples

4.2.7p142  NTP Protocol 4 v2.7.142 (developement snapshot release)
4.2.6p3    NTP Protocol 4 v2.6.3   (stable release)
4.2.2      NTP Protocol 4 v2.2     (stable release)

Prior to 06-Jun-2006

Syntax

Protocol_Version.Minor_Version.Release_Tag

Release Tags

The tag is optional an is the patch / bug fix number.

   0-69 for releases on the A.B.C series.
   70-79 for alpha releases of the A.B+1.0 series.
   80+ for beta releases of the A.B+1.0 series.

Additional following this number indicates that this is an interim release.

Interim releases almost always have a C portion consisting of a number followed by an increasing letter, optionally followed by -rcX, where X is an increasing number. The -rcX indicates a "release candidate".

Release Tag examples:

   4.1.0      A production release from the ntp-stable repository.
   4.1.0b-rc1 A release candidate for 4.1.1 from the ntp-stable repository.
   4.1.71     An alpha release of 4.20 from the ntp-dev repository.

The goal of this scheme is to produce version numbers that collate properly with the output of the ls command.