Unable to set correct time

[philled]

I have a number of CentOS 5.5 virtual machines running on VMware ESXi 4. Most of them are fine, but one of them has the incorrect time and no matter what I try I can't get it to display properly. The time seems to be 15 hours behind and I think that might be because the original source virtual machine was an appliance built in Canada and my timezone is Australia/Sydney.

/etc/sysconfig/clock:

UTC=true
ARC=false
ZONE="Australia/Sydney"

ls -l /etc/localtime:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Mar 29 09:05 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Sydney

I've run:
ntpdate pool.ntp.org
hwclock --systohc

I thought that was all of the settings I needed to make. Is there something else I've missed? Why can't I get the time right?

[yancek]

Had a similar problem several months ago with my time being one hour off. Tried pretty much what you post above and it didn't work. Eventually just checked the /etc/localtime file which of course was incorrect. This file should show your zone on the bottom line. My solution was to copy the specific file for my location to the /etc directory and rename it to /etc/localtime. I renamed the original /etc/localtime file first, just in case.

Don't know if this will work for you or if it has anything to do with it being a link, my /etc/localtime isn't a lin and this worked for me.

[philled]

Eventually just checked the /etc/localtime file which of course was incorrect. This file should show your zone on the bottom line. My solution was to copy the specific file for my location to the /etc directory and rename it to /etc/localtime.

Thanks for that - it worked! It looks like my Sydney timezone file was corrupt so I copied one from another machine and now the time's correct. I left /etc/localtime as a link to it.

[yancek]

I was curious as to whether it being a link had anything to do with the problem, looks like not. Glad it worked for you.