stable-8 regression: time stands still

[Ruben de Groot]

On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 09:36:32AM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick typed:
> On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 06:12:27PM +0100, Ruben de Groot wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 12:09:21PM +0100, C. P. Ghost typed:
> > > On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Ruben de Groot <mail25 at bzerk.org> wrote:
> > > > malenfant# sysctl kern.timecounter
> > > > kern.timecounter.tick: 1
> > > > kern.timecounter.choice: TSC(-100) HPET(900) ACPI-safe(850) i8254(0) dummy(-1000000)
> > > > kern.timecounter.hardware: HPET
> > > 
> > > Just a wild guess... but is HPET really enabled in the BIOS?
> > 
> > Well, there's no such option in the BIOS. Just checked. It's btw an AMI BIOS.
> > I'm totally unfamiliar with timecounter hardware, but after resetting the BIOS to
> > factory settings (which I think it allready was, since I only change anything 
> > there when there is a real reason) the problem persists.
> 
> The BIOS option could be labelled something like "Multimedia Timer" or
> "High Prevision Event Timer".  Each mainboard or BIOS manufacturer seems
> to have their own naming convention for it, though Wikipedia does shed
> some light on the confusion.

I've looked through all options, without succes :(

> > I'm going to get this kern.timecounter sysctl from the system booted with a 7.x livecd 
> > this evening. But really, I think this is a regression. Even if this system is the only
> > one known to be affected (which I sincerely doubt).
> 
> You can force a timecounter choice by setting it in /boot/loader.conf.
> I would recommend choosing ACPI-safe on your system to see if that
> improves things:
> 
> kern.timecounter.hardware=ACPI-safe

Thanks, that solved my issue. Allthough for correctness I must add that this line
must be put in /etc/sysctl.conf; it does nothing in loader.conf.
Also the sysctl can be run in multiuser and immediately fixed the problem.

One question remains: why did this suddenly become a problem in FreeBSD 8 and not
in FreeBSD 7.

cheers,
Ruben