timezone: vm guest OS on win2k3

[contink]

This is a bit of an odd one and I suspect I already know the answer but I thought I'd ask anyways.

Setup:
- win server 2k3 sp2 with vmware server installed
- guestOS ubuntu 7.04 server with LAMP installed
- phpBB2 test install on apache2

The windows server is setup with time correct and automatic correction for DST ticked so it's showing up as having the correct time.

Where it gets weird is that the phpBB2 install is showing time to be an hour extra on. It's almost as if PHP is getting the win2k3 DST adjusted time and interpreting it as GMT and then applying DST all over again.


Probably worth noting that I've written a mod for phpBB2 to properly ID timezones and DST boundaries/rules but that's working fine...


Is this a known "feature"?

[contink]

Anyone?

[SimpleSi]

I don't know the answer but I also have time problems with the Grandmas LAMP VM (which is just XUbuntu+stuff) showing the wrong time.

It wasn't a real problem since I just use it for testing websites before uploading to real hosts.

Spent 2 mins on it once and just gave up

regards

Simon

[Geoff]

Install VMWare tools in the client OS.

- OR -

Use NTP

[contink]

Install VMWare tools in the client OS.

- OR -

Use NTP

Normally that would be a great idea but the thing here is that I actually need to be able to play with the date/time on the GuestOS because I need to test how my code reacts before and after DST boundaries.

Really, I'm just wondering whether the situation I described is accurate (ie: GuestOS is incorrectly reading DST adjusted time from hostOS as GMT.

[Geoff]

The basic problem is that *nix expects the hardware clock to be set to UTC. Where as windows expects it to be set to the local time. Because we're still in BST, this is why your *nix guest is an hour out.

[contink]

The basic problem is that *nix expects the hardware clock to be set to UTC. Where as windows expects it to be set to the local time. Because we're still in BST, this is why your *nix guest is an hour out.

... ah... as suspected... Thanks for the confirmation Geoff. Just another reason for me to consider converting the 2k3 OS from host to guest and getting ubuntu or something similar on there instead.

Thanks for that..

[Geoff]

You can alter the behavior of *nix and tell it that the HW Clock is set to local time by running the following command:

hwclock --localtime