Timekeeping with VMware on Linux
If you’re like most users, you have some form of power management installed in Linux, especially if you are using a laptop. These power management applications typically scale down the processor speed resulting in your guest OS’s clock running faster than your host’s clock (source).
If you have VMware Tools installed, you can go into the options tab and enable “Time synchronization between the virtual machine and host operating system”. Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep the clock synchronized at all times for some users but rather synchronizes it at intervals. One solution to fix this time problem is to specify the maximum CPU speed in VMware’s configuration file. To do this you need to edit the configuration file:
sudo gedit /etc/vmware/config
With the configuration file open, look for the following lines:
host.cpukHz = 1830000
host.noTSC = TRUE
ptsc.noTSC = TRUE
If they do not exist go ahead and add them. Change the 1830000 number to match the frequency of your CPU. For example 1830000 = 1.83GHz. Once you have done this, restart VMware and boot into your guest OS, your clock should now stay in sync with your host OS.
Filed under: linux, ubuntu, virtualization, vmware, windows | 1 Comment
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