Don’t know how to configure time on Cloudboot Hypervisor? We can help you.

As part of our Server Virtualization Technologies and Services, we assist our customers with several OnApp queries.

Today, let us see how our support techs configure the time for our customers.

Configure time on Cloudboot Hypervisor

We can perform this on OnApp 3.x and XEN Cloudboot Hypervisors.

This article showcases steps for a Centos5 (XEN HVs) Cloudboot HV.

In addition, the internet should be available on the HV.

Moving ahead, our Support Techs suggest taking into priority the following points.

1. Cloudboot HVs use BST time zone during the boot
2. The hardware clock is read-only once during the OS boot
3. /etc/sysconfig/clock is absent on Clouboot HVs. So hardware clock is read as local time for BST time zone
4. We cannot change these by custom config.

Now, let us see the steps our Support Techs employ to get this configuration done.

• Set hardware clock to current BST time

To do so, we boot the HV

root@HV# /etc/init.d/ntpd stop
root@HV# echo -e 'xx.xxx.xxx.x\t0.centos.pool.ntp.org' >> /etc/hosts
root@HV# ntpdate 0.centos.pool.ntp.org
root@HV# hwclock -w

• Make CP timezone file available for the HV

Here, we check if /etc/localtime on CP is a regular file or a symlink:

root@CP# ls -al /etc/localtime
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 440 May 2 15:00 /etc/localtime

Then we copy the timezone file:

root@CP# cp /etc/localtime
/tftpboot/images/centos5/diskless/snapshot/HW_MAC_ADDRESS/etc/localtime

• Modify the HV custom config (in UI)

We need to add the following lines to the HV custom config:

ln -sf /.rw/etc/localtime /etc/localtime
echo -e '79.142.192.4\t0.centos.pool.ntp.org' >> /etc/hosts
echo -e '193.192.36.3\t1.centos.pool.ntp.org' >> /etc/hosts
echo -e '82.193.117.90\t2.centos.pool.ntp.org' >> /etc/hosts

• Reboot the HV from UI

Suppose we don’t want to set up the internet on these HVs. Then we can configure the ntpd service on the CP and modify ‘ntp.conf’ on the HVs via custom scripts to use the CP as the source.

In this case, we do not need to add records to /etc/hosts.

However, since it does not relate to OnApp software, and we have restrictions to set up third-party services, your team will have to do this setup.

[Need help with the configuration? We are here for you]

Conclusion

In short, we saw how our Support Techs go about time configuration on Cloudboot.