Authenicated NTP

[LamaZ]

Folks,

In an effort to facilitate checking the status of authenticated NTP, I've added some columns to the NTP Status page to parse the output of ntpq -c associations as defined in the ntpq Command spec. Let me know what you folks think.

The last 3 columns have been added (AssocID, Status Word, Auth). I only added those 3 to the GUI, but I added the plumbing for the most of the fields in case someone wanted to display them as well.

Patch file provided if you want to try it out. It worked for me :)
status_ntpd.php.auth.patch

PS - I'm trying to unlock my Redline account to add this as full fledged feature request. Somehow I'm not getting the password reset email at the moment.

-LamaZ

[JonathanLee]

@lamaz I just got my official secure email from NIST and was given a key and a value, do I only use the value inside of pfsense, it seems to work correctly with that again I will need your patch to see if it authenticated correctly. COOL encrypted secure time!!

[JonathanLee]

@lamaz

I added my key however it is not using auth

With your patch so I can add my key number to use with key value now it works !!! Thanks

[JonathanLee]

@lamaz I am going to open a redmine ticket for you as this is missing the key value and redirect the ticket to this page so others can see this.

[JonathanLee]

@lamaz

Yeah!!!

[LamaZ]

Awesome! Warms my heart to see someone else getting value out of these patches and that they are working for others.

@jonathanlee said I am going to open a redmine ticket for you as this is missing the key value and redirect the ticket to this page so others can see this

Let me know how that goes. I tried many moons ago to get it added with no luck. Here is the last time I tried: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8794

I'd follow up myself, but I somehow can't reset my redmine password. I'm guessing too many recent reset password attempts from my IP. The password apparently can't be too complex.

-LamaZ

[JonathanLee]

@lamaz that is from 2018 ?? Wow I added some notes in your older ticket just now.

[JonathanLee]

@lamaz thank you for the patches. I appreciate you.

If you wanted the leap second file this is the one I am using

https://www.ietf.org/timezones/data/leap-seconds.list

[LamaZ]

@jonathanlee Has it been that long?! Time flies.

[LamaZ]

@jonathanlee Just added the leap seconds to my setup. Thanks for the tip!

I like that I tried adding my comments to the file and it validated the hash. Put another it gave me an "signature mismatch" because something had changed. I went back and copy/pasted as-is and now have the leap seconds properly setup.

cat /var/log/ntpd.log | grep leap
Mar  3 19:02:51 pfSense ntpd[61552]: leapsecond file ('/var/db/leap-seconds'): signature mismatch
Mar  3 19:03:36 pfSense ntpd[75239]: leapsecond file ('/var/db/leap-seconds'): good hash signature
Mar  3 19:03:36 pfSense ntpd[75239]: leapsecond file ('/var/db/leap-seconds'): loaded, expire=2023-06-28T00:00:00Z last=2017-01-01T00:00:00Z ofs=37

-LamaZ

[DeLiver]

@jonathanlee Off topic, but how do you get Status/NTP to sort like you have shown? 2.6 CE to 22.01 and 23.01 Plus all act weirdly when trying to sort by columns, for me. Thanks.

[tman222]

@jonathanlee said in Authenicated NTP:

@johnpoz you can fax them also I just did, I want to test this, I have seen time jumps during cyber security classes in the past. 10-15 min jumps. Maybe this will fix it again with the use of my firewall I have not seen that in a while. Still I want to check it out. "Users who wish to use this service should send a letter to NIST using the US mail or FAX machine (e-mail is not acceptable)."

@JonathanLee - do they still require a static IP address or can a host name be given instead (in case the IP is dynamic)? Thanks in advance.

[JonathanLee]

@tman222 I was required to provide the IP address provided to me by my ISP.

[JonathanLee]

@deliver I installed the patch that is listed above. LamaZ provided it to us, I am very thankful for it. Use the 23.05 version

[JonathanLee]

@lamaz time flys haha as we talk about time servers

[LamaZ]

@LamaZ said in Authenicated NTP:

status_ntpd.php.auth.patch

@LamaZ said in Authenicated NTP:

system.inc.ntp-auth.23.01.patch

Folks, just upgraded to 23.05 and these patches still work. Copy them to your /root folder (that's ~ for admin).

cd /etc
patch -u -b /usr/local/www/status_ntpd.php -i /root/status_ntpd.php.auth.patch
patch -u -b inc/system.inc -i /root/system.inc.ntp-auth.23.01.patch

I periodically come back to this thread and remember what I've done over the years :).

-LamaZ

[MatthewA1]

I have a PR open that incorporates the patches @LamaZ made (more or less) as well as adds a key ID field to the web GUI. If anyone is interested in testing it out to make sure I didn't miss anything, I can upload equivalent patch files here.
pfsense/pfsense#4658

[JonathanLee]

@MatthewA1 That's amazing can you post the patch, I would like to test it on 23.05.01 "pfSense Plus"?

[MatthewA1]

@JonathanLee Thanks! I tested on a CE 2.7.1 VM as I only have one Plus device, and it's very much a production device. Here are the three patch files. I'm not 100% sure they are compatible with Plus as I have not looked at the PHP source files for 23.09, but I don't believe there is any difference with the modified sections in CE vs Plus.
These are created based on master+9257345. It seemed to work fine with my NTP server, but it would probably be good if someone could test against NIST NTP servers (as I also just setup my GPS based NTP server, so it's possible it was misconfigured but worked anyways)
system.inc.patch
status_ntpd.php.patch
services_ntpd.php.patch

Also, the table on the NTP status page is wider than the title header. I'm not sure there is a way to fix that other than removing one of the columns. If anyone has suggestions, please do share.

[JonathanLee]

@MatthewA1 @LamaZ his was the same way with the column issue see below.