FreeBSD 10-R 8 vCPU panics at boot under XenServer (on 8 'core' CPU)

[Roger Pau Monné]

On 17/02/14 21:00, Karl Pielorz wrote:
> 
> --On 17 February 2014 16:56:14 +0100 Roger Pau Monné
> <roger.pau at citrix.com> wrote:
> 
>> In order to provide more debug info, could you apply the following patch:
>>
>> http://xenbits.xen.org/people/royger/0001-xen-debug-Xen-PV-timer.patch
>>
>> It will expand the panic message a little bit. Also, after applying the
>> patch you can manually edit sys/dev/xen/timer/timer.c and increase
>> NUM_RETRIES to see if that solves the problem.
> 
> Ok, tried adjusting the NUM_RETRIES #define in that patch (I left the
> PCI passthroughs in place at the moment). I had no idea what to set it
> to - so I went for 600. With it set at 600 that same guest now boots Ok
> now every time I've tried.
> 
> But I did notice the whole 'SMP AP CPU #x Launched!' takes forever, and
> varies a lot (e.g. one boot it took nearly 2 minutes to launch all CPU's
> and continue).
> 
> I removed the PCI passthroughs on that guest, and it now flies through
> the AP launches. Unfortunately though I need the passthroughs :(
> 
> I've passed through the onboard LSI 2308 SAS controller (mps), and a
> dual port PCI-E Intel NIC (igb) - all the passthroughs work on FreeBSD
> once it's booted - but obviously, not without causing the slow AP CPU
> launches.

I've passed through a dual port BCE card (Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5709)
without problems. As a test, could you try to only pass the nic or the
SAS controller to see if we can figure out if this is specific to one of
the devices?

> I also remembered I set 'hw.pci.enable_msi=1' and 'hw.pci.enable_msix=0'
> in /etc/sysctl.conf - someone else found that was necessary to use the
> LSI in passthrough mode.
> 
> Aside from the slow launches, do you think (as they work) it's going to
> cause issues leaving those passthroughs active?

Not sure, still have to figure out what's going on.

Roger.