It's actually ntpdate, executed by the startup script with a sampling of 8 packets (-p 8). ntpdate is actually supposed to be a deprecated utility. Remove /etc/ntp/step-servers to skip the ntpdate step, which will block the bootup process. ntpd will then be executed with the -g parameter, which will perform ntpdate type functionality on a first synchronization with the time servers. Subsequent syncs will use slew/step corrections instead.
This *should* be bugzilla'd.
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?component=ntp>
I don't see anything that matches. Is this still true in FC3? (I'm still using FC2.)
