I really want a google certification. That is, a certification that says I am an expert googler. To the uninitiated, google may seem like a simple thing, but finding what you really need usually isn’t.

I saw this forum post while trying to figure out how to configure vmware guest time synchronization with scripts running off of vmware server. Something wasn’t write though:

# vmware-guestd –cmd ‘vmx.set_option time.synchronize.tools.startup 0 1’
Unknown option name

So I went and grabbed the new open-vm-tools source. In ‘lib/include/vm_app.h’

#define TOOLSOPTION_SYNCTIME “synctime”
#define TOOLSOPTION_COPYPASTE “copypaste”
#define TOOLSOPTION_AUTOHIDE “autohide”
#define TOOLSOPTION_BROADCASTIP “broadcastIP”
#define TOOLSOPTION_ENABLEDND “enableDnD”
#define TOOLSOPTION_SYNCTIME_PERIOD “synctime.period”
#define TOOLSOPTION_SYNCTIME_ENABLE “time.synchronize.tools.enable”
#define TOOLSOPTION_SYNCTIME_STARTUP “time.synchronize.tools.startup”

Trying combinations of the last two did nothing, but I did have vmx.set_option as a search term though and eventually found this post that just uses:

vmware-guestd –cmd ‘vmx.set_option synctime 0 1’

Nothing appeared on the screen when I ran this on a guest, but I did notice that the vmx file for the guest on the host automatically changed from:

tools.syncTime = “FALSE”

to

tools.syncTime = “TRUE”

I thought I was going to have to write a sed script and have puppet change all the vmx files and do a reboot of all the guests. Much happier now.