[CentOS] Slow clock on CentOS 4.4 in a VMware VM

Wed Feb 7 14:03:58 UTC 2007
Alfred von Campe <alfred at 110.NET>

I'm running a CentOS 4.4 VM on a Windows XP host with VMware Server,  
and have the problem that my clock runs too slow (it happens in  
VMware Workstation as well).  It loses between 30 and 45 seconds  
every minute!  This is a known problem and can be fixed by adding  
"nosmp noapic nolapic" to the boot command according to VMware tech  
note ID 1420.  However, despite adding these options as well as some  
others (acpi=off pci=noacpi clock=pit) and turning off a bunch of  
daemons (cpuspeed, irqbalance, etc.) I still have a slow clock.  Here  
are the daemons that are still enabled:

anacron         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
apmd            0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
atd             0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
autofs          0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
crond           0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
cups            0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
cups-config-daemon      0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on     
5:on    6:off
denyhosts       0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
gpm             0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
haldaemon       0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
iptables        0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
kudzu           0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
mdmonitor       0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
messagebus      0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
microcode_ctl   0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
netfs           0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
network         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
ntpd            0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:off   5:on    6:off
portmap         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
readahead       0:off   1:off   2:off   3:off   4:off   5:on    6:off
readahead_early 0:off   1:off   2:off   3:off   4:off   5:on    6:off
sendmail        0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
sshd            0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
syslog          0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
vmware-tools    0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:off   5:on    6:off
winbind         0:off   1:off   2:off   3:off   4:on    5:off   6:off
xfs             0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
xinetd          0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

Has anyone else come across this problem and if so, did you find a  
way to fix it?  This is the last issue that is preventing me from  
distributing this VM to users.

Thanks,
Alfred