Comment 20 for bug 83604

Mika's patch is certainly still applicable in Natty. I think I'm going to go ahead and apply that; it seems common to have an empty /etc/ntp.conf due to this (I had one myself) and this is an easy workaround. There's a separate bug 427775 for more general logic problems with /etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate, and a separate bug 583994 for replacing ntpdate altogether.

I'm also going to reopen the system-tools-backends task on this bug, due to this comment in the original bug report:

  "it defaults to the ntp servers defined in /etc/ntp.conf, an empty file; which makes debconf to *not* create a proper /etc/ntp.conf if one decided to install ntpd on a whim"

(It's actually dpkg, not debconf, but the basic point stands.)

Because of this, system-tools-backends should take care not to create /etc/ntp.conf as an empty file if it does not already exist.