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.
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.