I have installed Ubuntu server 12.04 as a KVM host, and created an Ubuntu guest that is also running Ubuntu server 12.04. The servers are in the AST time zone which is UTC + 3 hours. After setting the time correctly in the guests using date -s
I am able to reboot the guests as much as I like with the correct time being retained between reboots.
If however the KVM host is rebooted (the host has no time issues between reboots), then once I start my KVM guests all of them are exactly 3 hours behind the correct time. The output below shows the system time and hardware clock time on the host and guest.
root@kvmhost1:~# date
Wed Jan 16 14:10:38 AST 2013
root@kvmhost1:~# hwclock
Wed 16 Jan 2013 02:10:40 PM AST -0.187899 seconds
root@kvmguest1:~# date
Wed Jan 16 11:10:45 AST 2013
root@kvmguest1:~# hwclock
Wed 16 Jan 2013 02:10:47 PM AST -0.521226 seconds
Once the time is corrected on the guests then they can be rebooted without the time shifting incorrectly.
Things I've tried/tested
- I tried this on three separate physical servers all exhibit the same exact behaviour.
- One of the kvm hosts is running Ubuntu 11.04 and the same behaviour happened.
- I've considered using a time server to resolve the issue, but Ubuntu recommends not using NTP on the KVM guests. There is a good discussion of this in KVM guests clock synchronisation, which suggests that kvm-clock running in the guest should take care of this.
- I've run
dmesg | grep kvm-clock
on the guest and it confirmed kvm clock is in use.
Update
I set the hardware clock to use local time using the --localtime
option on the hwclock
command. The same issue still persists. The output is a little clearer though because the software and hardware clocks are set with the same time.
root@kvmhost1:~# date
Wed Jan 16 15:50:26 AST 2013
root@kvmhost1:~# hwclock
Wed 16 Jan 2013 03:50:29 PM AST -0.750378 seconds
root@kvmguest1:~# date
Wed Jan 16 12:50:29 AST 2013
root@kvmguest1:~# hwclock
Wed 16 Jan 2013 12:50:31 PM AST -0.849677 seconds
The solution
The answer by Michael Hampton below solved the problem. The guest was created using a kickstart file which by default doesn't set the hardware clock on UTC time. I added the --utc option to the kickstart timezone option and it solved this issue. The kickstart option is now as follows:
timezone --utc Asia/Bahrain