Re: amd64: does it ever work? ;)

Michael Tokarev
2008-02-01T08:31:39Z

Amit Shah wrote:

> On Friday 01 February 2008 13:30:03 Michael Tokarev wrote:

>> Some time ago I tried KVM for the first time, on an AMD X2-64 system
>> (BE-2400 processor, also tried with other similar processors, like
>> "plain" X2-64 4888+ etc), first with 2.6.23 vanilla kernel compiled
>> for 64 bits, SMP. After it didn't work, I also tried KVM modules
>> from SVN (compiled against the same kernel sources), and when 2.6.24
>> was out, I tried that too. Neither of which works.
>
> KVM doesn't have an SVN tree; do you mean git?

Err... It was totally screwed up. I tried kvm-59 release from
sourceforge, not git (and definitely not svn :)

Right now I'm compiling kvm-60.

>> Userspace tools is from Debian unstable -- 58+dfsg-1.
>>
>> The effect is as follows.
>>
>> With 2.6.23 and vanilla kvm modules, while from X, it opens the
>> "virtual console" (an X window), but that console is entirely
>> empty (black), and nothing more happens. I can Ctrl+C the original
>> process, but nothing more.
>>
>> With 2.6.23+modules-59, and with vanilla 2.6.24, it again opens
>> the window, and the HOST machine immediately reboots (goes into
>> BIOS Post screen).
>>
>> When not loading kvm modules, it works in all 3 cases.
>>
>> Where to look at to debug it further?
>
> Can you check if you have any BIOS updates? This seems like BIOS support for
> SVM might be half-baked.

Well.. I tried it on 2 different motherboards with 2 different
CPUs (in all 4 permutations):

Biostar TA690G-AM2 - AMD690G chipset, latest BIOS (dated 09-2007)
ASUS M2NPV-VM - Geforce6150/Nforce430(?) (MCP51), latest BIOS (dated 11-2007)

The effect on both is exactly the same.

So I don't think it's a BIOS problem after all. Maybe some kernel
option(s) (like tickless (dynticks) for example - but 2.6.23 x86-64
didn't have that option). But with so many options I'm afraid I can't
tell which to try to turn off... ;)

Thanks!

/mjt