No usable event timer, FreeBSD Current, PCEngines WRAP

[Ian Lepore]

On Tue, 2013-06-04 at 18:39 +1000, Nigel Williams wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm attempting to run FreeBSD-10 CURRENT (built using nanoBSD) on a 
> PC-Engines WRAP device, and encounter the following during boot: "panic: 
> No usable event timer found!" after which the machine reboots. I have 
> been able to run pfSense 2.0.1 (bsd 8.1) and it appears to find the 
> i8254 timer.
> 
> The verbose boot output:
> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9KWjvUN8efvQ0RMNXRzRS1rS0k/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> Kernel conf:
> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9KWjvUN8efvLUpRekJORWhmSFE/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> nanoBSD conf:
> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9KWjvUN8efvTzIya3pNUXc5elk/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> any suggestions?

The problem does seem to be that the i8254 (atrtc) device isn't
instantiated.  I'm not sure whether the acpi errors at the start are
innocuous warnings or the cause of the problem (it has ever been thus
with acpi -- you report an error message on a mailing list and the
response is often "that's normal, you can ignore it").

The atrtc device should be found via PNP data or /boot/device.hints if
not via acpi.  Perhaps acpi is working "enough" that it thinks it should
be using it, but not enough to find the timer.

You could try "set hint.acpi.0.disabled=1" at the loader prompt and see
if that changes anything.  If it does, I'd call it more of a workaround
than a fix.

-- Ian