Hi,

I have a windows server and I run Virtual Server 2005 on it to create a virtual OS which is a Linux (CentOS) on it. The time on the server keeps on going much faster than the normal timing. For example, I can change the time to the right time as matched to any clock now and it will definitely run 30 minutes or more there after.

Any one know whether this is a known issue or just my luck?

Virtual Machines are known to not keep the right time, so yes it is a known issue.

You would try using NTP to sync the time at a specified interval, or in the case of other Virtualisation apps they have a toolset which effectively does this for you, and provides drivers.

I'm not sure about Virtual Server 2005, so I can't help on that front, but generally virtual machines and keeping time are known to not mix so well.

Milton, you can try to set your time by using this command. Get a cronjob to sync it every 5 mins.

rdate -s rdate.cpanel.net

Enjoy!

Milton, you can try to set your time by using this command. Get a cronjob to sync it every 5 mins.



Enjoy!

Have set the date and then use the command to set the date. Wonder if I don't use cronjob, does it help?

Rather than running rdate from cron, just setup ntpd and it will continually keep things in sync and avoid things such as skewing the time backwards when it is reset. However, under some virtualization environments the clock skew is pretty substantial, enough to even cause problems with NTP (iirc, early versions of VMWare had this problem). In this case, it's worth contacting your virtualization provider to find a better solution - there are often special kernel settings or VM configurations that can improve things.

Rather than running rdate from cron, just setup ntpd and it will continually keep things in sync and avoid things such as skewing the time backwards when it is reset. However, under some virtualization environments the clock skew is pretty substantial, enough to even cause problems with NTP (iirc, early versions of VMWare had this problem). In this case, it's worth contacting your virtualization provider to find a better solution - there are often special kernel settings or VM configurations that can improve things.

Well, I guess is because CentOS isn't the guest OS for Virtual Server 2005.