Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:18:51 +0200
From: Gerhard Brauer <gerhard.brauer@web.de>
To: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: "Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino" <lcapitulino@mandriva.com.br>,
       Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@polymtl.ca>,
       Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: 2.6.{26.2,27-rc} oops on virtualbox
Message-ID: <20080826141851.GA5300@tux1.brauer.lan>
References: <48ADDF4F.2020401@zytor.com> <48AE5FCF.6030103@zytor.com> <20080822065012.GV14110@elte.hu> <20080822113941.147a1db0@doriath.conectiva> <20080822153451.GA8390@Krystal> <20080822132948.57e47076@doriath.conectiva> <20080822163520.GA9860@Krystal> <20080822142054.403cbdef@doriath.conectiva> <20080822175741.6bc83dc8@doriath.conectiva> <48AF2ABD.9070100@zytor.com>
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On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 02:08:13PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino wrote:
>>
>>  I have asked Mandriva and Ubuntu users to test this and all of
>> them so far are saying that noreplace-paravirt works.
>>
>>  It makes the system slower, but it works.
>>
>
> Yes, the big issue is exactly what VirtualBox screws up in this matter,  
> how to detect it, and how to work around it.
>
> It's pretty clear it's a VirtualBox f*ckup at this point, but the failure 
> mechanism isn't at all obvious and so far the workaround is elusive.
>
> I'm strongly suspect this is a VirtualBox tcache management failure, but  
> that doesn't help the situation without knowing how it happens.

On Archlinux we have the same problem. We have a bugreport here:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11141

Myself test it with a LiveCD/Install-ISO which has 2.6.26 as install
kernel. We have the guest oops on virtualbox-ose, virtualbox-sun and both on
i686 or x86_64 hosts.

Some things i noticed:
- The system boots always when i either enable VT-x in guest settings or
  disable acpi and run the guest with acpi=off.
- The oops occurs always on (disk)-io, no matter which file system i
  use.
- When the oops has occured and the guest has to close and restart then,
  if i don't use VT-x or acpi=off, i always get an oops directly when
  initrd/kernel is starting. Last screen message before the oops then is
  "Freeing SMP alternatives".

Here is also an archive with guest dmesg and messages.log from such an
oops when heavy disk io leads to the oops:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11141?getfile=2445


> 	-hpa

Gerhard

-- 
Standards sind eine tolle Sache.
Ich finde, jeder sollte einen haben.
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