[Tfug] ntpd problems - server losing an hour or more each day

[Stephen Hooper]

Did you try Brian's suggestion?  He seems to be a VMWare expert now...

What VMWare product are you running?  I saw this happening in GSX
server, and more prevalently when there was a Windows guest machine.

We ended up fixing it the exact same way you did, until the GSX server
was upgraded to ESX, and then the problem pretty much went away.

On 10/30/06, Chad Woolley <thewoolleyman at gmail.com> wrote:
> As a follow up, this ended up NOT fixing the problem after all.  It
> kept time for a couple of days, then started losing again.  I finally
> just stuck this in root's crontab to get rid of the problem for now:
>
> 0 1 * * * /usr/sbin/ntpdate pool.ntp.org;/etc/init.d/ntp-server start
>
> This will force a sync and restart the ntp server every hour, whether
> it needs it or not.
>
> -- Chad
>
> On 10/17/06, Chad Woolley <thewoolleyman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks a lot William, this helped me fix the problem.  I put this in
> > my vmx file:
> >
> > timeTracker.periodicStats = TRUE
> > timeTracker.statInterval = 10
> >
> > I still have no idea why another identical VM on the same box doesn't
> > have the same problem, but oh well.
> >
> > Thanks again!
> > -- Chad
> >
> > On 10/13/06, William Stott <wstott at ventanamed.com> wrote:
> > > I ran into this very same problem with VMWare. It was on SUSE, but the OS is
> > > not really the issue. VMWare + ntpd don¹t always play nice. Here¹s what I
> > > had to do to fix it:
> > >
> > > Add this to the vmx file for the guest OS:
> > >
> > > timeTracker.periodicStats = "TRUE"
> > > processor1.use = "FALSE"
> > > processor2.use = "FALSE"
> > > processor3.use = "FALSE"
> > > processor4.use = "FALSE"
> > > processor5.use = "FALSE"
> > > processor6.use = "FALSE"
> > > processor7.use = "FALSE"
> > >
> > > Change the time in the OS to the correct time.
> > >
> > > Start the ntp client
> > >
> > > Hope this helps.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > William Stott
> > >
> > >
> > > On 10/13/06 10:36 AM, "Chad Woolley" <thewoolleyman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I have a box (Ubuntu Server) which keeps losing time, an hour or more
> > > > per day.  I'm running ntpd, but it keeps (apparently) crashing when
> > > > the time gets too far off, even though I pass the -g option.
> > > >
> > > > The strange thing is, this is a VMWare virtual server, and another
> > > > virtual server on the same box  which is - er - virtually identical -
> > > > does NOT have this problem.
> > > >
> > > > This was a standard apt install of the ntp daemon (just like the other
> > > > box).  We've tweaked the config a bit, to no avail - logging to a
> > > > separate file, passing -g on startup, and commenting out the "LOCAL"
> > > > entries in ntp.conf.
> > > >
> > > > Does anyone have any idea how to fix or even debug this?  Here's the
> > > > log for ntpd, I can provide the init script/ntpd conf if needed.
> > > >
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:16 ntpd[18862]: ntpd 4.2.0a at 1:4.2.0a+stable-8-r Mon May
> > > > 29 02:48:41 UTC 2006 (1)
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: precision = 5.000 usec
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface wildcard, 0.0.0.0#123
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface wildcard, ::#123
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface lo, 127.0.0.1#123
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: Listening on interface eth0, 69.55.xxx.xxx#123
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: kernel time sync status 0040
> > > > 12 Oct 11:39:18 ntpd[18862]: frequency initialized 50.605 PPM from
> > > > /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
> > > > 12 Oct 11:51:04 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 82.211.81.145, stratum 2
> > > > 12 Oct 11:54:14 ntpd[18862]: time reset +190.260196 s
> > > > 12 Oct 11:54:14 ntpd[18862]: kernel time sync disabled 0041
> > > > 12 Oct 11:59:37 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 213.251.165.16, stratum 2
> > > > 12 Oct 12:04:57 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 82.211.81.145, stratum 2
> > > > 12 Oct 12:04:57 ntpd[18862]: kernel time sync enabled 0001
> > > > 12 Oct 12:07:13 ntpd[18862]: no servers reachable
> > > > 12 Oct 12:49:06 ntpd[18862]: synchronized to 213.251.165.16, stratum 2
> > > > 12 Oct 12:49:06 ntpd[18862]: time correction of 1022 seconds exceeds
> > > > sanity limit (1000); set clock manually to the correct UTC time.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Chad
> > > >
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>
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