Am 13.09.2012 11:30, schrieb Tilman Schmidt:
In a fit of recklessness, I updated VMware on one of the hosts on which the CentOS 6 machines were still able to run. Lo and behold, they still work fine there. So now I have:
ESXi Build 582267 800380 800380 Processor E5620 E3-1230 E3-1270V2
Windows ok ok ok (all versions)
CentOS 5.8 ok ok ok 2.6.18-308.13.1.el5
CentOS 6.2 ok ok ok(*) 2.6.32-220.7.1.el6.x86_64
CentOS 6.3 ok ok Panic 2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64
(*) except for the irritating keyboard blink
In the meantime, one other user with the same problem has turned up on the VMware forum. He reports that Windows 8 x64 doesn't work on the E3-1270V2 host either, but a 32 bit install of CentOS 6.3 does.
Also, I have updated the last host and it continues to run all VMs fine, so the ESXi version is definitely not the culprit.
What happened between kernel releases 2.6.32-220.7.1.el6.x86_64 and 2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64 that would cause a CPU dependent early exception?