Hi,
I have CentOS 5.3 64bit and couple of Windows Server 2008 32Bit DomU's on it.
Problem is that I got hit with the "A clock interrupt was not recevied on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval" Blue Screen when trying to run with more than one CPU
When searching around I found that official XEN distribution (development version) has some fixes for it, but is there anything I could do on CentOS / windows quest to get the things working with more than one CPU.
Greetings, Veli-Pekka Kestilä
I had that issue when I first installed. The clock still acts up once in a while if I take the system down entirely for a few hours, which won't happen now that it is in the rack.
This seems to work for me at the moment, with or without Xen GPLPV, though GPLPV "safens" your install (Registry Hive errors without it). YMMV and I am not shaken out yet!
- Xen with UTC off. NTP Service getting time. "Stock CentOS 5.3 repos" - Win2K8 x32 (Web Edition) (plus SQL Express 2005), NTP off (aka Synchronize with Internet Time server).
If using Xen GPLPV drivers there are some other things I changed, these may be strictly hardware platform relative (I'm on AMD x86_64, MCP55 chipset type, nvidia Fake Raid1 - two sets, dmraid not md).
Windows Device Manager: - Xen Disk Drivers: Optimize for quick removal. Pretty sure this disable write caching. - Xen Net Device Drivers: Checksum Offload (Disabled), Large Send Offload (Disabled)
Misc. - I do not have DVD/CD access working as Hardware or as virtualized iso yet. I do not have any USB devices showing (have an UPS monitored via USB in Xen kernel). I don't need any of these at the moment in Win2k8.
- I haven't tried a Win2K3 installation yet. So far I am very disappointed with Win2K8 and I'm calling Windows Vista Server here. 20gigs of partition space needed (excluding sql express) to just serve the first, static, web page? Gimme a break!
SQL Express 2008 was a resource cpu-churning pig and sluggish, downgraded to SQL Express 2005 (with some fussing) for now, seems okay so far. Not fully tested. The whole 2008 web package is like using an elephant to shuck a peanut for you.
- There is a way to reduce the memory Windows 2008 takes at startup. I cannot find this interface click path at the moment (again). But start it at 2gig, work your way up. If you have shadow memory declared in the xend conf for it seem to ADD that to the total memory Win2k8 uses and I got flakey at the 4G border especially with the shadow declared in the xend conf file. 2G ram with SQL 2005 Express loaded local has been more than enough to handle a moderately high amount of webserving once its tweaked out. Reducing the memory in the xend conf did NOT seem to stop Win2k8 from taking as much as it could as a pure hvm or with the Xen GPLPV drivers.
Considerations about memory:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx
Veli-Pekka Kestilä wrote:
Hi,
I have CentOS 5.3 64bit and couple of Windows Server 2008 32Bit DomU's on it.
Problem is that I got hit with the "A clock interrupt was not recevied on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval" Blue Screen when trying to run with more than one CPU
When searching around I found that official XEN distribution (development version) has some fixes for it, but is there anything I could do on CentOS / windows quest to get the things working with more than one CPU.
Greetings, Veli-Pekka Kestilä _______________________________________________ CentOS-virt mailing list CentOS-virt@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-virt
Ben M. wrote:
I had that issue when I first installed. The clock still acts up once in a while if I take the system down entirely for a few hours, which won't happen now that it is in the rack.
This seems to work for me at the moment, with or without Xen GPLPV, though GPLPV "safens" your install (Registry Hive errors without it). YMMV and I am not shaken out yet!
I have also installed the GPLPV drivers. But they didn't help with crashes when trying to use two CPU
- I haven't tried a Win2K3 installation yet. So far I am very
disappointed with Win2K8 and I'm calling Windows Vista Server here. 20gigs of partition space needed (excluding sql express) to just serve the first, static, web page? Gimme a break!
Well the W2K3 seems to work without problems. Although those virtual machines only use one CPU so can't know for sure.
Memory use really isn't problem. But the issue still remains that I would need some way to get Windows 2008 to relax the timing requirements for the CPU's. So that it wouldn't do the BSOD's on the missed clock interrupts. And don't want to go back to 2003 as these machines will most probably be running next 5-years with this os.
-vpk
I am by no means an expert at this. I just have a lot of fresh wounds I learned from.
- Use NTP only in Xen dom0. - Turn off NTP in Windows domU, force it to just use system time. It will stay current from Xen, at least that is what I see here. - Check your xm dmesg, if you are getting NMI warnings from that dom# I am pretty sure that is the clock conflict and it bluescreens me. I fixed it with above.
- Maybe post your domU conf file for it too. Will compare to mine. I have been stable for a week now and the clock is running true.
- I will accept that you are using well under 4g ram as reported in Windows Taskmanager.
- How many vcpu's did you give dom0. I could NOT get Windows to run with two cpus without giving dom0 MORE than one vcpu. I finally let it have them all, I reserved cpu0 for dom0 and I have never seen it use more than one cpu and generally it will stay there in in cpu0/vcpu0. If anything overall performance is the same, maybe better. I do not think SMP will work if dom0 doesn't have at least 2 cpus/vcpus at its disposal. This is all stock Centos-Xen yum current.
- Make sure you don't have nosmp (toggled off) in your grub.conf.
- Keep your /var/lib/xen folder clean of vestiges from crashes.
Veli-Pekka Kestilä wrote:
Ben M. wrote:
I had that issue when I first installed. The clock still acts up once in a while if I take the system down entirely for a few hours, which won't happen now that it is in the rack.
This seems to work for me at the moment, with or without Xen GPLPV, though GPLPV "safens" your install (Registry Hive errors without it). YMMV and I am not shaken out yet!
I have also installed the GPLPV drivers. But they didn't help with crashes when trying to use two CPU
- I haven't tried a Win2K3 installation yet. So far I am very
disappointed with Win2K8 and I'm calling Windows Vista Server here. 20gigs of partition space needed (excluding sql express) to just serve the first, static, web page? Gimme a break!
Well the W2K3 seems to work without problems. Although those virtual machines only use one CPU so can't know for sure.
Memory use really isn't problem. But the issue still remains that I would need some way to get Windows 2008 to relax the timing requirements for the CPU's. So that it wouldn't do the BSOD's on the missed clock interrupts. And don't want to go back to 2003 as these machines will most probably be running next 5-years with this os.
-vpk
CentOS-virt mailing list CentOS-virt@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-virt
-
Ben M. -
Veli-Pekka Kestilä