Solaris 11 (Parallels 6): NTP By Default?

[Rishi Chopra]

Does anyone know whether NTP should be working by default? Solaris 11 is successfully installed for the virtual machine in question and the network connection is also working... but NTP does not seem to be updating the clock...

 

[rlhamil]

I just got Parallels 8 (to run OS X Mountain Lion guest on Lion Server host, to test apps and familiarize before upgrading). So I haven't attempted the apparent difficulties of running Solaris 11 under Parallels - still have it under VirtualBox.

root@virtualbox-solaris11:~# svcs ntp
STATE STIME FMRI
disabled 18:30:27 svc:/network/ntp:default

To enable:

svcadm enable svc://network/ntp:default

(after first copying /etc/inet/ntp.client to /etc/inet/ntp.conf and editing the latter as needed)

However...running ntp on a virtual client isn't usually a great idea...but if there's no alternative offered (supposedly VMware has their own client time synch tools?), then I'd be tempted to have the host broadcast or multicast the time, and the VMs simply listen passively to that; I think it'd be the easiest and least overhead. Set up the security for NTP if that's an issue (man ntp.conf on Solaris).

 

[Rishi Chopra]

Thanks for the reply.

I just got Parallels 8 (to run OS X Mountain Lion guest on Lion Server host, to test apps and familiarize before upgrading). So I haven't attempted the apparent difficulties of running Solaris 11 under Parallels - still have it under VirtualBox.

It's probably a smart move; my discussions with Parallels support regarding a Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac host resource consumption issue confirmed that not many people run Solaris with Parallels Desktop and that the level of integration with the host is not the same as it is for Windows guests.

However...running ntp on a virtual client isn't usually a great idea...but if there's no alternative offered (supposedly VMware has their own client time synch tools?), then I'd be tempted to have the host broadcast or multicast the time, and the VMs simply listen passively to that; I think it'd be the easiest and least overhead. Set up the security for NTP if that's an issue (man ntp.conf on Solaris).

What you're suggesting is elegant... but not simple. Setting up a host to broadcast/muticast a signal is more work than simply configuring a client to grab the time (and, in fact, the tools which something like VMware Workstation would install to the guest would result in the guest grabbing the time from the host and not such a fancy configuration); the least overhead would be incurred from just grabbing the signal from the NTP pool at 'time.nist.gov'.

PS: The NTP client can also be configured via the GUI ("Time and Date") but the issue is whether it is configured by default; common sense would lead me to believe that it is but it would be nice to get confirmation.