[CentOS] CentOS 6.3 early panic on Xeon E3-1270V2

Thu Nov 8 12:57:39 UTC 2012
Tilman Schmidt <t.schmidt at phoenixsoftware.de>

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?

-- 
Tilman Schmidt
Phoenix Software GmbH
Bonn, Germany