[olug] vmware guest system clock speed problem

[Phil Brutsche]

Matthew Anderson wrote:
> Hey VMWare Experts --
> 
> I'm seeing some pretty wacky behavior with a VMWare guest OS -- the  
> system clock is running at something like 3x realtime.  The host is  
> running Ubuntu 6.06 and the current version of VMWare Server Beta,  
> and the guest is FreeBSD 6.1.
> 
> I do an ntpdate command, pause only for a moment, and do it again,  
> and it already reports a time shift of multiple seconds.
> 
> Anyone familiar with this phenomena?  Any easy way to remedy the  
> situation?

I see it too - the latest RC of VMware Server, CentOS4 host, multiple
guest operating systems (Windows 2000, Windows XP, multiple Linux
distributions) - some guests don't drift too far, some will be 5 to 10
minutes fast or slow.  Only the Windows guests have VMware Tools
installed, but the Linux guests see it too.

The only fix I have is to run ntpdate (or the Windows equivalent) every
quarter hour on the guest.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us