I'm running VMWare 3.0 on my Mandrake 8 system (although I've updated most of the original software from source by now). I attempted to set up a linux VM (tried Mandrake 8.0 CD, 8.1 CD image, and LFS 3.0) so I can hack my kernel in peace, but no matter what I do the VM's clock won't sync with my host system clock. I installed VMWare Tools and checked the appropriate checkbox, and that didn't change anything. I set the system clock manually, and immediately afterwards the date command was 7 hrs and 54 mins slow (I'm in GMT-5, aka Eastern Time). I'm not sure what Mandrake did to my timezones or how Linux handles such things in the first place, but during installation it reported America/New_York, which is correct, on both the host and guest systems.

This wouldn't be such a problem if the clock stayed consistent, but it doesn't. It has a tendency to jump 5-8 hours in either direction at random times. And let me tell you, interesting things happen when you run a kernel that was built with clock skew

The same thing happens in a lab at the University I attend. Those machines are running Redhat 7.1 and VMware 2.something, but I know very little about their configuration.

Any ideas?