[Casper] Dual Boot - Time Sync Issues

[Ernst, Craig S.]

I sure have. Below is the email from my regional engineer. Since we aren't gung ho on dual boot I haven't gotten back around to check on it so use at your own risk I guess. =)

-- Forwarded Message --
Hi Craig,

I just came across this today...fyi...


I have worked with several customers experiencing this problem with clean installs of Windows and the Boot Camp drivers. The main problem is that Windows does not use Universal Time and Mac OS X does. The Boot Camp Drivers install a Boot Camp time driver in Windows, however I have found that it works inconsistently. I have not tried to "Unset the registry key," as Mike suggested. Perhaps that is all you need.

I have found rebooting in to Mac OS X can cause the computer to be somewhere between 4 and 17 hours off. During a restart Mac OS X does not force ntpd to run immediately. This happens some time well after the computer has restarted. To solve this I pulled together instructions I found on macosxhints.com and elsewhere. The first thing you want to do is set the ntp server to the same server in both Windows and Mac OS X. Typically, it is best to point it at the same ntp server the KDC is pointed at. Once that is complete the instructions are...

Dilemma: Rarely, but in some circumstances, restarting the system from a Windows Boot Camp partition causes the Mac OS X clock to be off by several hours, which results in authentication problems with Active Directory or Open Directory.

Solution (Mac): Per this hint <http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070507030228844&query=boot%2Bcamp%2Btime> , set the system to force a network time lookup during startup:

 1.  1.Download and launch Lingon <http://lingon.sourceforge.net/index.html>
 2.
 3.  2.Click "New," select Users "Daemons" and choose "Create"
 4.
 5.  3.Name it using a reverse naming convention (ie. edu.university.ntupdate)
 6.
 7.  4.Under "What" type "/usr/sbin/ntpdate -buv" without the quotes
 8.
 9.  5.Select "Run it when it is loaded by the system (at startup or login)"
 10.
 11. 6.Enter "/Library/logs/bp.log" without the quotes in the field "Run it if this file is modified:" This assumes you have Boot Picker installed on your system as the bp.log is the Boot Picker log.
 12.
 13. 7.Choose "Save" and type in your admin user name and password

note: these instructions are relevant to Lingon version 2.1 as steps may vary for earlier or later versions.

This assumes you're using Boot Picker. If you are not point to another log that will change during the boot sequence.

I have included these instructions and more on my web site, intended for customers, which is here...

http://web.mac.com/driley/iWeb/Tools.html




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On 6/11/09 2:58 PM, "Weber, Jason" <jason.weber at district196.org> wrote:

Just when I thought I finally had my Dual Boot deployment all dialed in.. I ran into one final hurdle!

Has anyone else had issues with the clock being out of sync when switching back and forth between Mac OS X and Windows Vista? (Both Operating systems bound to AD)

I do have the Mac side pointed towards our district time server, and Windows 'should' pull from our AD server. The problem on the Windows side is that since the system on boot is so far off on time, it never seems to sync with the AD server. (Also locks non-local users out since there is no sync with AD at that point).

I have run the AppleTime.exe as a startup service on the Windows side, and also checked any other Time Zone settings I can think of between both OS's and no luck.

I can go in and set both sides with the correct times and they will hold hold for awhile (roughly an hour or so). But in any case, after some amount of time the clocks get out of sync and then we have AD login issues on both OS's.

I know there are quite a few of you guys out there running dual-deployment, so have you run into this issue at all?

Thanks for any ideas!

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