Since both ntpd and ntpdate rely on ntp servers, and since the Ubuntu repos have yet to complete an update of ntp to 4.2.8p4 (the version recommended by ntp researchers), I expect this means that both ntpdate and ntpd are vulnerable on my laptop (or at the very least, capable of connecting my laptop to any number of vulnerable ntp servers through either mechanism, so it's not sufficient to just stop ntpd alone).
I don’t feel confident about reviewing code and updating to the new version of ntp 4.2.8p4 myself. At the same time, I would like the packages to remain installed so that when future updates become available in the repos, I will be notified by Software Updater.
So my question is not "How to update?" nor “How to uninstall?”, but rather how do I simply disable or ‘turn off’ both ntpd and ntpdate, so they do not ever run or log any activity, without uninstalling them?”
How do I disable ntpd? suggest I can simply prevent ntpd running at all using
sudo update-rc.d -f ntp remove
and prevent ntpdate running at all by adding exit 0
to /etc/default/ntpdate
.
However, I do not know how/where in the file to place the line exit 0
.
Do I just use an editor like vi or nano to write in exit 0
on any line without a #
comment symbol, and it will be interpreted by the system correctly? Can someone please confirm / elaborate on this solution?
exit 0
to the bottom of thentpdate
file so that thentpd
sees that it exited with0
which means something tontpd
. Certain scripts and files have different exit codes meaning different things.