NTP settings on 64-bit Debian with VMWare revisited

The local hardware clock is not the reference source, as it shouldn't be. But mind you, this is with no VMWare running, so if the above hypothesis is correct, we don't expect NTP to pick the local clock. Of course there could be other changes causing the improvement...

You need kernel headers/sources and a C compiler for that. Since I'm using Debian, I also need to patch the installer with the following, obtained from Ubuntu:

--- /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl.orig      2008-11-28 12:06:35.641054086 +0100 
+++ /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl   2008-11-28 12:30:38.593304082 +0100
@@ -4121,6 +4121,11 @@
  return 'no';
}

+  if ($name eq 'vsock') {
+    print wrap("VMWare config patch VSOCK!\n");
+    system(shell_string($gHelper{'mv'}) . ' -vi ' . shell_string($build_dir . '/../Module.symvers') . ' ' . shell_string($build_dir . '/vsock-only/' ));
+  }
+
print wrap('Building the ' . $name . ' module.' . "\n\n", 0);
if (system(shell_string($gHelper{'make'}) . ' -C '
           . shell_string($build_dir . '/' . $name . '-only')
@@ -4143,6 +4148,10 @@
  if (try_module($name, $build_dir . '/' . $name . '.o', 0, 1)) {
    print wrap('The ' . $name . ' module loads perfectly into the running kernel.'
               . "\n\n", 0);
+      if ($name eq 'vmci') {
+       print wrap("VMWare config patch VMCI!\n");
+       system(shell_string($gHelper{'cp'}) . ' -vi ' . shell_string($build_dir.'/vmci-only/Module.symvers') . ' ' . shell_string($build_dir . '/../'));
+      }
    remove_tmp_dir($build_dir);
    return 'yes';
  }
	    

At this point, the VMWare services are running, and I see no sign in the logs of lost interrupts yet, and NTP is doing well. With virtual machines running, there is no timer problem any more according to the logs, but the hardware clock loses 5 minutes in 10. After a couple of minutes running, ntpqsays:

The local clock has precedence once more.