I refuse to install X on servers. Unless there is a very compelling reason (read: application dependent), I don’t include any of the X components on a Linux install. After all, why would a headless server need a GUI?
So when I had to install the X server packages on my Virtual Machines just to turn on time sync, I was understandably put out. I could log into the host and modify the .vmx file for my virtual machine, sure. But if there is a method to do it from the guest, why not do it that way? It turns out that vmware-guestd is the key on Linux Virtual Machines.
[root@tardis ~]# /usr/sbin/vmware-guestd –cmd “vmx.set_option synctime 0 1″
This will allow you to turn on the time sync between the guest and host from the command line when you don’t have the X server components installed and don’t want to/are unable to log into your host directly to modify the .vmx file.
When installing VMware Tools on a Windows Guest, “Time Synchronisation” is not enabled by default.
However – “best practise” is to enable time synch on Windows Guests.
There a several ways to do this from outside the VM, but I wanted to find a way to enable time sync from within the guest itself either on or after tools install.
Surprisingly, this wasn’t quite as straightforward as I expected.
(I assumed it would be posible to set this as a parameter / config option during tools install)
After a bit of searching I found a way to do this in a VMware article called “Using the VMware Tools Command-Line Interface“.
So, if time sync is disabled, you can enable it by running the following command line in the guest:
VMwareService.exe –cmd “vmx.set_option synctime 0 1″
Link | August 23rd, 2011 at 7:27 am