Synopsis: This article discusses how to resolve time drift within a VMWare instance

If you are running your CensorNet in a VMWare instance you may be suffering from extreme clock drift. Typically, your CensorNet will lose or gain several minutes per hour and over a day you can be hours out.

Although the discussions at Clock Drift and Active Directory Time Syncronisation can assist once you have this major issue resolved, they will not be able to help you fix the initial problem.

First, you should make sure that you have VMWare Tools installed in your VMWare instance. If you fire up your VMWare console, it will normally tell you if you do not have it installed.

In addition, whenever you upgrade a version of CensorNet it is a quite frequent occurrence that you will receive a new kernel package upgrade^[1] as well. You can tell this if you get this message during the upgrade process.

If you have seen that message, then you need to re-install VMWare Tools. This is because it gets compiled into the kernel on install, and your upgraded kernel does not have the necessary code compiled into it.

When you have installed (or reinstalled) VMWare Tools, edit the "Other Linux.vmx" file you will find in the directory where your VMWare instance is installed (open it in a text editor like Notepad). Ensure you have a line in it that reads :-

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"

Note: You will need to repeat this step after a re-installation of VMWare Tools.

Save the file and then reboot your CensorNet. Once you have corrected the time, it should not drift again until the next time you receive a new kernel package upgrade.

If you need assistance installing VMWare Tools, either for the first time, or subsequent to a Kernel Upgrade, please contact CensorNet Support.

1. CensorNet are not responsible for Kernel Package Upgrades. They are part of the normal Debian upgrade process.