Re: Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC)?

[Mark Hounschell <dmarkh@cfl.rr.com>]

Tim Kay wrote:
> 
> Mark,
>         we have a similar problem using PowerEdge 2450s 1550s and 6400s, all our
> machines are running with noapic in the lilo config which sounds like it
> isn't an option for you. I'd be interested where you heard about Dell
> stuffing up the setup of the APIC chip because we may be able to take this up
> with them. 

Search the kernel mailing lists at kernel.org for apic and you will find a number
of them. Of coarse this is all hear say.

>I've had no reply from the list for the message below (maybe it
> would be better posted to Kernel Traffic SMP but that's a very quiet list).
> Anyway maybe the BSD diagnostics will help you investigate this.

I have no experience with BSD.

> 
> --------------------enc---------------
> Hello,
> just a quickie, our Dell Poweredge boxes - Serverworks motherboard - are
> continually pumping out IO-APIC errors as I've reported here before, we have
> three of the same boxes running FreeBSD (limitless file descriptors per
> process - sorry, we need it!) and I've just noticed that dmesg on these says
> that:
> 
> IO APIC - APIC_IO: Testing 8254 interrupt delivery
> APIC_IO: Broken MP table detected: 8254 is not connected to IOAPIC #0 intpin
> 2
> APIC_IO: routing 8254 via 8259 and IOAPIC #0 intpin 0
> 
> Does this help anyone diagnose the error??

I see a message very similar but with the text "Broken_Bios". I don't really know
if it is related to the problem or not.

One thing for sure that I can say is that irqs 0,1,2 cannot be directed to or from
any processor on these 6400 boxes. They insist on being stuck to all 4 processors.
This I do beleive is related to the HANGS that I have.

-- 
Mark Hounschell
dmarkh@cfl.rr.com