The centos 4.x we are using as platform for the VMWare VMs (yes, I know there is version 5, but we need to be compliant with RHEL 4.x because of the ATG requirements) installs by default the NTP client.

Here is sequence of steps that needs to be performed to enable automatic synchronization of the clocks.

  1. make sure the DNS works
cat /etc/resolv.conf
sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf

and check that nameservers point to something meaningfull, e.g:

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 192.168.16.1

cat /etc/ntp.conf

/sbin/chkconfig --list | grep ntpd

sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 ntpd on

sudo /usr/sbin/ntpdate pool.ntp.org

sudo /sbin/service ntpd start