This is the same kind of problem I had under Xen in the beginning. The fix is to figure out what vmware gives you in the way of time info and use that exclusively.
It problem seems odd but you can have cases where, e.g., 'sleep 10' works and date is not right. I had this under both lguest and xen. It's been enough years that I have forgotten but you also want to stop using the emulated pc-style timer interrupts. It's clear that vmware is not exactly getting these right. A look at the xen port might give some hints. Just figure out if vmware gives you a nice "time of universe" 64-bit counter or something and take your time from that. Or, alternatively, stop using vmware :-) That strikes me as the best bet. ron
