*Request For Feedback*: TimeOwner in phosphor-timemanager

[vishwa]

Hi,

Happy New Year ...

btw, looks like TimeOwner may not be of interest for the community ?. 
Shall we go ahead remove that setting ?

!! Vishwa !!

On 12/19/19 1:30 PM, vishwa wrote:
> On 12/19/19 1:29 AM, Kun Yi wrote:
>>
>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 7:02 AM vishwa <vishwa at linux.vnet.ibm.com 
>> <mailto:vishwa at linux.vnet.ibm.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hello community,
>>
>>     Would be really great if there is any feedback on this.
>>
>>     Have a happy holidays !!
>>
>>     !! Vishwa !!
>>
>>     On 12/11/19 3:24 PM, vishwa wrote:
>>>     On 12/11/19 12:17 AM, Pine, Kathryn ElaineX wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     >*Do we need this going forward ?*: I am being asked by UX team
>>>>     about the need of this and I mentioned I would get the
>>>>     community feedback on this. Although, I feel this level of
>>>>     granularity gives control over how we can manage time, it would
>>>>     not justify the complexity if the customers don't appreciate
>>>>     it. Removing the TimeOwner would make the code a lot simpler.
>>>>
>>>>     Hi,
>>>>
>>>>     I am coming from the UX side of how we set the date time
>>>>     settings page up for phosphor-webui downstream recently. We
>>>>     switched our page to use Redfish, here’s how ours is set up now:
>>>>
>>>>     There is no longer a “time owner” and the setting is either:
>>>>
>>>>     NTPEnabled: true or false
>>>>
>>>>     If false, we are not allowing the user to set the time, because
>>>>     the BMC is synching from the host time and therefore any
>>>>     settings we made to the time on the BMC would be overwritten.
>>>>
>>>>     If true, we use the NTP server(s) the user provides.
>>>>
>>>>     We are testing this currently.
>>>>
>>>
>>>     Hi, Thank you for the response. From what I interpreted:
>>>
>>>     - TimeOwner is not settable via GUI
>>>     - Irrespective of NTP setting, the user is not allowed to set
>>>     the time on BMC
>>>     - BMC is syncing the time from Host.
>>>        - This means, the current TimeOwner is "Host" and NTP is off.
>>>     Is that being set as default ?
>>>
>>>     I am requesting for feedback from the community on the need of
>>>     TimeOwner feature that we have in Settings and timemanager code.
>>>
>>>     !! Vishwa !!
>>>>
>> My 2cents here along with a few questions:
>> - how does the current time manager interact with systemd-timesyncd?
>
> TimeManager interacts with systemd-timedated, which in turn engages 
> systemd-timesync on setting *NTP *policy.
> https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-timesyncd.service.html**
>
>> - From my experience, BMC time can drift a lot easily and it is more 
>> useful to have the BMC time synced externally
>
> This is a discussion point for using / not using NTP. It would not 
> impact TimeOwner
> https://github.com/openbmc/phosphor-time-manager/blob/master/README.md
>
>> - Whether NTP or host time is preferred should be left to the 
>> platform designer to decide
>
> If the setting is NTP, then Host can not set the time on BMC unless 
> the Owner is SPLIT.
> I believe, you are saying more from a NTP / Non NTP as opposed to 
> TimeOwner ?
>
>> - sounds like it would be more straightforward to have the 'Owner' 
>> reflect one time source: NTP/IPMI/Redfish
>
> This is part of TimeSynchronization. TimeOwner is another layer on who 
> owns the time as opposed to how the time is set.
> Hopefully the README I pointed to before would help.
>
> Thank you,
> !! Vishwa !!
>>
>> -- 
>> Regards,
>> Kun
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