[Bug] NTP is not retried if network not present at boot

[systemmonkey42]

If the device finishes initialising BEFORE the network comes up, NTP fails and, as far as I can tell, is never retried.

It seems to go something like -

• device powers on
• jetkvm_app starts
• jetkvm_app requests NTP and connects to cloud (all fails)
• network connects, gets IP.

I can SSH in, and see date = 1970. Cloud connection not present.

$ ssh root@192.168.11.61 date
Thu Jan  1 00:01:10 UTC 1970

You can simulate this just by plugging the power in, waiting for it to finish booting, then connecting the network.
Once it has failed to obtain NTP, all SSL certificates are considered invalid, so it wont sign into the cloud service, will
return certificate failures when checking for updated.

As far as I can tell, it never retries the NTP. I left it running for a day, and the internal clock never synced.

This appears to be a aggravated by my switch taking excessively long to negotiate 100MB Fast Ethernet..
When I move the ethernet connection to a different switch, the network initialises faster, and everything is fine.

This manifests in many ways, including;

• Update Error - Invalid TLS certificate #534
• Time Synchronization does not work #538
• Error downloading 0.39 Update #350
• failed to check for updates - found workaround #68
• Time Synchronization does not work #538
• [Alternative Fix] Set system time without NTP #293

The root cause is always NTP failing, and not being retried.
I suggest that NTP should be retried rapidly until it has been set at least once, then return to its normal schedule.

Thanks

[IDisposable]

There's a lot more handling needed for timesync (over NTP or HTTP servers). I've suggested some fixes in #609

[systemmonkey42]

The fix (app version 0.4.4) seems to have resolved it for me.

[LurgenAU]

I was a little disappointed to find that while yes, this issue is closed, no the issue is not even slightly fixed for recently shipped hardware. Spending half an hour debugging the device, only to find it's something as dumb as NTP not updating properly on boot, was disappointing for what looks like a pretty decent device.

For anyone who hits this problem in future...

• Enable SSH (via Settings / Advanced / Developer Mode
• Provide it with your SSH Public Key and hit the Update button
• SSH to root@[kvm-ip]
• Run the command date -s 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm'
• Return to the web interface and run an update (via Settings / General / Check for Updates)

It should update immediately to the latest build, which is substantially better than the version the device ships with. Basic features like being able to upload an image now work in this build, although we still can't mount an image through the browser (bit of a gap there, "Coming Soon" isn't ideal).