Comment 5 for bug 978127

Thanks for the work around Scott. I installed ntp on the MAAS-server and tweaked the ephemeral image to use ntpdate from it:

apt-get -q -y install ntpdate
ntpdate -p 8 SOME.PUBLIC.SERVER
apt-get -q -y install ntp ntp-doc

IFACE=eth1
IPADDR=`ifconfig eth1| grep 'inet addr'| sed -e 's/.*addr://' -e 's/ .*//'`
export IPADDR
# The tweak the ephemeral image to set the clock
mount /var/lib/maas/ephemeral/precise/ephemeral/amd64/20120424/disk.img /mnt/
chroot /mnt
apt-get update
cat >> /etc/init/cloud-init.conf << END

pre-start script
ntpdate -p 8 ${IPADDR}
hwclock -w
end script
END
exit
umount /mnt

# after that, the nodes boot and configure!