No usable event timer, FreeBSD Current, PCEngines WRAP

[Milan Obuch]

On Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:21:26 -0600
Ian Lepore <ian at FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> 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
> 

WRAPs do not have acpi, so I have no 'device acpi' in kernel config for
them. It is not necessary to have 'cpu I486_CPU' and 'cpu I686_CPU' in
kernel config, by the way... I use small configuration

cpu             I586_CPU
options         CPU_GEODE
ident           GEODE
makeoptions     DEBUG=-g
makeoptions     WITHOUT_MODULES="..."
options         SCHED_ULE
options         PREEMPTION
options         INET
options         FFS
options         SOFTUPDATES
options         UFS_ACL
options         UFS_DIRHASH
options         UFS_GJOURNAL
options         QUOTA
options         MSDOSFS
options         CD9660
options         PROCFS
options         PSEUDOFS
options         SCSI_DELAY=5000
options         KTRACE
options         STACK
options         SYSVSHM
options         SYSVMSG
options         SYSVSEM
options         _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING
options         PRINTF_BUFR_SIZE=128
options         INCLUDE_CONFIG_FILE
options         KDB
options         KDB_TRACE
options         SMP
device          apic
device          cpufreq
device          pci
device          ahci
device          ata
options         ATA_STATIC_ID
device          scbus
device          da
device          pass
device          pmtimer
device          uart
device          loop
device          random
device          ether
device          md
device          bpf

and load if_sis from module (and some other modules too).

What's in your /boot/device.hints file? I think following is relevant:

hint.atrtc.0.at="isa"
hint.atrtc.0.port="0x70"
hint.atrtc.0.irq="8"

At least when I comment these lines out, I get the same 'panic: no
usable event timer found' error.

Regards,
Milan