[ale] VMWare Server and time

[The Don Lachlan]

God, I hate top-posting.

This is related to the way that ticks are counted by the CPU. It is VMWare 
specific, AFAIK. I've seen this LOTS w/ VMWare and never w/ Xen or VirtualBox.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006113

In short, specify on the kernel line: "clock=pit" on i386 arch and "notsc" 
on x86_64 arch.

Also, you shouldn't need NTP on the VMWare client instances, just on the 
server; if NTP is running properly there, the clients will stay correct by 
using their hardware clock.

-L

On 03/30/2011 02:10 PM, Chris Fowler wrote:
> I'm still running VMWare Server and have never really solved time issues
> in the guests.  The problem I'm halving is that the clock in each guest
> drifts so bad I have to constantly update it.  I have a script that will
> execute ntpdate every hour.  Here is a part of the log
>
>
>
> 10 Aug 00:53:15 ntpdate[16209]: step time server 69.31.13.210 offset
> 13.118829 sec
> 10 Aug 01:53:06 ntpdate[19433]: step time server 75.144.70.35 offset
> -12.301576 sec
> 10 Aug 02:53:13 ntpdate[22663]: step time server 69.10.36.3 offset
> 5.684093 sec
> 10 Aug 03:53:52 ntpdate[26002]: step time server 216.184.20.83 offset
> 37.277543 sec
> 10 Aug 04:54:08 ntpdate[29719]: step time server 207.171.30.106 offset
> 14.900770 sec
> 10 Aug 05:54:10 ntpdate[517]: adjust time server 69.93.111.178 offset
> 0.231262 sec
> 10 Aug 06:54:12 ntpdate[3808]: adjust time server 207.171.30.106 offset
> 0.045966 sec
> 10 Aug 07:54:13 ntpdate[7029]: step time server 64.73.32.134 offset
> -1.187768 sec
> 10 Aug 08:55:03 ntpdate[10259]: step time server 69.63.177.217 offset
> 47.613517 sec
> 10 Aug 09:54:40 ntpdate[13547]: step time server 208.94.240.2 offset
> -24.475964 sec
>
>
> It seems as the host's load increases the clock drifts more.  Is this
> just a fact of VMWare server?
>
> Chris
>
>
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