Steven M. Bellovin writes:
> The particular problem case is us.pool.ntp.org, which selects among a 
> large set of servers.  I suppose I could write a little daemon that 
> queries for it (and other important servers) after things are booted, 
> and changes the "static" entries in /etc/hosts...

If you are going to query something that isn't your own named, it
sounds like a bit more work than I would do for a quick hack.

Come to think of it, I wonder is a simple "host" waiting to resolve
the hostname would be good enough as a self-adjusting wait for the
nameserver to come up.  eg.  before doing the ntpdate, run:

    host -w -W 120 us.pool.ntp.org || echo "named is sucking mud again"

-wolfgang