On 14/03/2020 22:56, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 10:05:20PM +0200, Liran Alon wrote:
Michael, you can also refer to this VMware time-keeping whitepaper:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf__;!!GqivPVa7Brio!K8sfnfvVgKwrQ4SMwX-K6-S5yR4ln9_qZ6o4GzIpQkohfWtinlplNhXzFlyUgks$
.
According to section "Initializing and Correcting Wall-Clock Time":
"""
VMware Tools can also optionally be used to correct long‐term drift
and
errors by periodically
resynchronizing the virtual machine’s clock to the host’s clock,
but the
current version at this writing is limited.
In particular, in guest operating systems other than NetWare, it
does not
correct errors in which the guest clock
is ahead of real time, only those in which the guest clock is behind.
"""
This talks about guest time.
What this does not mention is whether hosts need to employ any
mechanisms
to synchronise wall clock between hosts.
The above mentioned whitepaper also discuss how VMware maintains the
wallclock time across migrations (vMotion).
See section "Using VMware Tools Clock Synchronization" in whitepaper.
Specifically, there is an option in .vmx file named
"time.synchronize.resume.disk" which:
"""
If set to TRUE, the clock syncs after resuming from suspend and after
migrating to a new host using the VMware VMotion feature.
"""
The matching functionality in open-vm-tools can can be seen in
services/plugins/timeSync/timeSync.c where ToolsOnLoad()
registers the "Time_Synchronize" RpcCallback, which is
TimeSyncTcloHandler(), that is possibly allowed to sync time
backwards (Note the "backwardSync" var).
The current patch-series I have submitted doesn't implement this
RpcCallback functionality.
That work can be delayed to a future patch-series that will add this
extra functionality as-well.
If I understand correctly, this seems to validate my assumption
that current
implementation for CMD_GETTIME is sufficient.
So I am concerned this does not interact well with other time sources
in QEMU. For example, it's very useful to set guest time with -rtc base
flag.
Can you use qemu_get_timedate?
This is a very good point.
VMware also have the ability that allows user to explicitly set guest
time with .vmx "rtc.startTime" option.
(The time-zone can also be set by specifying an offset from UTC with
"rtc.diffFromUTC" option)
However, if you will read section "Using VMware Tools Clock
Synchronization -> Disabling All Synchronization" in above mentioned
whitepaper,
you will notice that in VMware's design, VMPort CMD_GETTIME command
is intentionally not synced with virtual CMOS TOD. i.e. The section
explicitly
documents that if a user wants to set guest time to fictitious time,
user must disable VMware Tools time sync functionality by manipulating
"tools.syncTime" and "time.synchronize.*" configuration options as
desired.
Therefore, I think current patch VMPort CMD_GETTIME command
implementation is correct.
What do you think?
-Liran