Need help with NTP + VMWare

[Yuka]

I have an install of FreeBSD 7.0 for my webserver running on a VMWare platform. (VMWare Server, will be VMWare ESXi in the near future.)

The problem is that the time is very slow.... 3 to 4 seconds in the real world is 1 second on the FreeBSD box... VMWare tools doesn't support time sync with the host on FreeBSD. I've tried setting kern.hz=100 but I didn't notice much of a change.

I set the time earlier today, at roughly 10:00am EST... it is now 1:19 pm EST but the server reads 11:20am EST.

This isn't good for a webserver.

I'm also new to FreeBSD and 'nix in general.

I'm thinking some sort of ntpd implementation may be the best route. Time doesn't need to be 100% accurate at all times since the websites that this server hosts aren't the most mission critical things but I'd like the time to be within 5 minutes of the actual time.

If I kick off ntpd -g via cron when the system boots, that should handle the issue, but how do I make ntpd check the time every X minutes. I'm not worried about network traffic as the box sits on the same copper gigabit switch as my NTP server. I'm thinking if I set it to check every minute it should help me out quite a bit in keeping proper time.

Can anyone give me a hand or some insight that might help fix the issue?

[DutchDaemon]

As far as I know, ntpd has its own internal 'check cycles', where it performs all kinds of calculations on averages, delays, time slew, and what have you. I don't think there's a way to interfere with that process. You may be better off using the ntpdate command from cron. Given the large deviations in time, you will probably need ntpdate -b [ntp-host] (note below) at boot-up (to sync the initial time), and maybe even from cron as well (where you would normally not use the -b option). See man ntpdate.

In /etc/rc.conf:
ntpdate_enable="YES"
ntpdate_flags="-b ntp-hostname"

[Yuka]

Thanks, DutchDaemon!

I'll give that a shot and report back with the results.

[anomie]

Originally Posted by Yuka

I'm thinking some sort of ntpd implementation may be the best route.

Hammering an ntpd server with the frequency that would be required to (mostly) "fix" this is probably not a good approach.

Try adding the following to /boot/loader.conf:

kern.hz=100
hint.apic.0.disabled=1

(There are a number of gotchas when running FBSD as a vmware guest.)

[Yuka]

Thanks, anomie!

I'm trying both suggestions as we speak. I'll know the results shortly! Thanks for the help, both of you!


UPDATE: So far so good. It gets the date from the NTP server on boot. I'll monitor it throughout the weekend and report back later on. Thanks again!

[windependence]

Originally Posted by anomie

Hammering an ntpd server with the frequency that would be required to (mostly) "fix" this is probably not a good approach.

Try adding the following to /boot/loader.conf:

kern.hz=100
hint.apic.0.disabled=1

(There are a number of gotchas when running FBSD as a vmware guest.)

This is the correct solution. here is a link to the VMware knowledge base article:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mic...=0%200%2044545

-Tim

[Yuka]

So far so good, time is on the dot after making the changes on Friday.

Tim, I'm going to look into your posted solution, thanks! Also, how much of it applies to FreeBSD since the solution is geared towards a Linux guest machine?

[Yuka]

As a follow up...

I employed all of the tweaks listed above and ntpd. The tweaks helped to slow the rate of variance between the machine's time and the real world, however there was still a variance before I implemented ntpd.

Once I implemented ntpd I noticed some really weird time issues. The machine would boot up fine then time would vary at seeming random speeds throughout the course of a few days.

I had to reboot the box a few times, but I think ntpd has set up it's averages and realized what is happening. The time is now synched with my NTP server.

Thanks to everyone for their advice!

[18Googol2]

Cron helps me to sync time in my machines at mid night:

00      00       *       *       *       root    ntpdate your_local_time_server

Couldnt be easier

[windependence]

Going to ESXi will solve this or you and runs MUCH faster with less resources than server.

I'm sitting in VMware cert class right now. I'll report back when I get finished.

-Tim