Time drift on a SLES or OES Guest running on Hyper-V

This document (7008125) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V Host
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 3 Guest
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1 Guest
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES 2) Linux Support Pack 2 Guest
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES 2) Linux Support Pack 3 Guest

Situation

OES 2 Guest is experiencing time drift
SLES 10 SP3 Guest is experiencing time drift
SLES 11 SP1 Guest is experiencing time drift

Resolution

For an OES2 / SLES 10 Guest:
Update the kernel to AT LEAST SLES 10 SP3 version 2.6.16.60-0.74.7
NOTE: For an OES Guest always apply ALL current SLES and OES updates to avoid kernel - OES module mismatches.

For a SLES 11 SP1 Guest:
Update the kernel (and corresponding hyper-v-kmp package) to AT LEAST version 2.6.32.29-0.3

Additional Information

Prior to SLES 11 SP1 kernel version 2.6.32.29-0.3 and the corresponding hyper-v-kmp package, the hv_timesource LIS module was not always loading.

To verify what hv_ modules are loading run the following command as root user:

lsmod | grep hv

The following modules should be loaded:
hv_utils                3185 0
hv_timesource           1311 0 [permanent]
hv_storvsc             19663 0
hv_netvsc              30622 0
hv_blkvsc              26542 3
hv_vmbus               50934 4 hv_utils,hv_storvsc,hv_netvsc,hv_blkvsc
scsi_mod              184102 3 hv_storvsc,hv_blkvsc,libata

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