hwclock is not found in a fresh installed ubuntu 23.10.

[Yan Jin]

hwclock is not found in a fresh installed ubuntu 23.10.
Users have to install util-linux-extra to have hwclock included.
Can it be included by default in ubuntu 23.10 GA?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Pengpeng Sun (pengpengs)]

VMware customization executes "hwclock --systohc --utc" or "hwclock --systohc --localtime" to set hardware clock on Ubuntu VM since Ubuntu 13.04. Without hwclock command, the customization task on Ubuntu 23.10 will fail.

[Bernard Stafford (bernard010)]

https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/fake-hwclock
hwclock is in the universe repository.
It will not be considered for one of the install programs.
The install program list is full, this must be maintained
to reduce bloat of the operating system.

[Bernard Stafford (bernard010)]

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/708039

[Pengpeng Sun (pengpengs)]

Hi Bernard,

hwclock is relatively small package, 6.2KB per https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/fake-hwclock, as I mentioned, removing this package blocks VMware vSphere guest os customization feature to work on Ubuntu 23.10, especially for customer who deploy cloud image directly. It will be great Ubuntu 23.10 GA version can add this small package back.

Tracking this issue in VMware bug #3286498

[Pengpeng Sun (pengpengs)]

Hi Team,

Please kindly review this bug again, all the current VMware vSphere releases will NOT be able to customize Ubuntu 23.10 VM without hwclock command.

[David Hekimian (dhekimian)]

Can confirm this issue still exists with Noble Numbat 24.04 with open-vm-tools 12.3.5-5build1.

Is there a plan to resolve this before 24.04 is released?

[Pengpeng Sun (pengpengs)]

As I mentioned in #6, please Ubuntu team considers adding the 'hwclock' command back on 24.04, then all the current vSphere releases customers will not encounter this issue on LTS.

Since the next vSphere release (I will update the release version when it's released), we have replaced the command to fix this issue, but LTS is widely supported on the current vSphere releases.

[Pengpeng Sun (pengpengs)]

Hi David,

We've published a KB article on this issue, see https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/95091, it will be updated to include the vSphere release which fixed this issue when it's released.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Please see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/2039206/comments/16. This bug and that bug are effectively the same root issue, so I'm marking one as a duplicate of the other.

[mrvst (maravento)]

the same in Ubuntu 24.02