MP-BIOS bug problems with APIC and RAM > 1 GB
Posted: 12. Sep 2010, 20:40
Following hardware: Macbook Pro Model 5.5, 2.53 Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM
System: MacOSX Leopard 10.6.4, Virtualbox 3.2.8 r64453
Virtualbox configuration:
20 GB primary IDE HD
6 virtual SATA HD's.
RAM 1024 MB
1 CPU
IO APIC enabled
Hardware UTC clock enabled
Guest OS: Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5
I've used above setup for a couple of weeks to experiment with Oracle 11g R2 ASM, without a problem, besides:
- CPU constantly high when Guest OS running, even when idle - blowing fan
- Kernel startup: "WARNNG calibrate_APIC_clock: the APIC timer calibration may be wrong"
When changing the RAM allocation of the guest OS from 1024 MB to 2048 MB the following reproducible problems occur:
- MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC (new)
- Kernel startup: "WARNNG calibrate_APIC_clock: the APIC timer calibration may be wrong"
- Sporadic errors, sometime shutdown hangs, disk i/o stops, pressing a keys in terminal opens Vbox menus, etc.
- Strange errors such as hanging at synchronizing SCSI cache for disk sdk, although using SATA controller.
- Xorg not starting with display or terminal prompt garbled.
When I disable IO APIC in Virtualbox extended features:
- no longer displays the MP-BIOS bug message, but disk i/o hangs at startup.
- Fan goes quiet
- Vbox.log shows BIOS: int13_harddisk: function 02, unmapped device for ELDL=84
- hanging
Work-around:
- ioapic=off or noapic kernel parameter (configured in grub):
- IOAPIC disabled in Virtualbox setup
With above settings, system startup is working with or without IO APIC enabled in Virtualbox, but there are occasional wired issues, e.g. grub menu occasionally green at startup. Is there something broken with APIC and perhaps the INT13 interrupt when there is more than 1 GB RAM configured?
Thanks,
Markus
13-Sep-2010 Update
The system has frozen overnight, would not react to any key and I had to "force quit" virtualbox. I tested more grub boot options, also wondering why the grub menu sometimes appears in black and sometimes in green. I removed rhgb, quiet and also noapic from the kernel parameter line. To my surprise the system started properly again, even with IOAPIC is enabled in the Vbox settings. I put rghb quiet back and the system still works, with the 2 GB of RAM. Dmesg reports ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing. The only side-affect I have noticed is that the fan is blowing at maximum again.
Was it just some glitch?. But restarting the application or computer was certainly not the issue, since I tried that before.
16-Sep-2010 Update
Ever since I allocated 2 GB of RAM Virtualbox has become unstable, occasionally crashing for various reasons. The console.app diagnostic reports show kernel errors like "EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)", "EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)" and "EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)".
Startup will sometimes hang, showing the MP-BIOS bug, however after some waiting or several restarts (cmd-r) the error disappears and the guest OS startup up normally.
I enabled "divider=10" in the grub startup options, which reduced CPU usage and slows down the fan, but the system is freezing after being idle for a while and does not respond to any keystrokes.
System: MacOSX Leopard 10.6.4, Virtualbox 3.2.8 r64453
Virtualbox configuration:
20 GB primary IDE HD
6 virtual SATA HD's.
RAM 1024 MB
1 CPU
IO APIC enabled
Hardware UTC clock enabled
Guest OS: Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5
I've used above setup for a couple of weeks to experiment with Oracle 11g R2 ASM, without a problem, besides:
- CPU constantly high when Guest OS running, even when idle - blowing fan
- Kernel startup: "WARNNG calibrate_APIC_clock: the APIC timer calibration may be wrong"
When changing the RAM allocation of the guest OS from 1024 MB to 2048 MB the following reproducible problems occur:
- MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC (new)
- Kernel startup: "WARNNG calibrate_APIC_clock: the APIC timer calibration may be wrong"
- Sporadic errors, sometime shutdown hangs, disk i/o stops, pressing a keys in terminal opens Vbox menus, etc.
- Strange errors such as hanging at synchronizing SCSI cache for disk sdk, although using SATA controller.
- Xorg not starting with display or terminal prompt garbled.
When I disable IO APIC in Virtualbox extended features:
- no longer displays the MP-BIOS bug message, but disk i/o hangs at startup.
- Fan goes quiet
- Vbox.log shows BIOS: int13_harddisk: function 02, unmapped device for ELDL=84
- hanging
Work-around:
- ioapic=off or noapic kernel parameter (configured in grub):
- IOAPIC disabled in Virtualbox setup
With above settings, system startup is working with or without IO APIC enabled in Virtualbox, but there are occasional wired issues, e.g. grub menu occasionally green at startup. Is there something broken with APIC and perhaps the INT13 interrupt when there is more than 1 GB RAM configured?
Thanks,
Markus
13-Sep-2010 Update
The system has frozen overnight, would not react to any key and I had to "force quit" virtualbox. I tested more grub boot options, also wondering why the grub menu sometimes appears in black and sometimes in green. I removed rhgb, quiet and also noapic from the kernel parameter line. To my surprise the system started properly again, even with IOAPIC is enabled in the Vbox settings. I put rghb quiet back and the system still works, with the 2 GB of RAM. Dmesg reports ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing. The only side-affect I have noticed is that the fan is blowing at maximum again.
Was it just some glitch?. But restarting the application or computer was certainly not the issue, since I tried that before.
16-Sep-2010 Update
Ever since I allocated 2 GB of RAM Virtualbox has become unstable, occasionally crashing for various reasons. The console.app diagnostic reports show kernel errors like "EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)", "EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)" and "EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)".
Startup will sometimes hang, showing the MP-BIOS bug, however after some waiting or several restarts (cmd-r) the error disappears and the guest OS startup up normally.
I enabled "divider=10" in the grub startup options, which reduced CPU usage and slows down the fan, but the system is freezing after being idle for a while and does not respond to any keystrokes.