9.1-RELEASE AMD64 crash under VBox 4.2.6 when IO APIC is disabled

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday, February 13, 2013 6:56:06 pm CeDeROM wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:48 PM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >> The simple answer that I have deduced is that APIC is MANDATORY for
> >> AMD64 machines and they won't run otherwise? This is why generic AMD64
> >> install fails when no APIC is enabled in the VBox?
> >
> > No, it is not quite like that.  x86 machines have two entirely different
> > sets of interrupt controllers. (...)
> 
> Hello John :-) Things now are more clear to me, thank you for your
> extensive explanation!! :-) I am wondering in that case if it wouldn't
> be a good idea to put atpci (old x86 IRQ handler) in the GENERIC
> configuration, or at least in the default installer kernel, so it is a
> safe fallback for a AMD64 machines with no APIC support, as for
> example VBox with APIC disabled..? Is atpic removed on purpose so it
> enforces use of new APIC and so better performance?

Real hardware should always use device apic on amd64.  Even for a VM you
should prefer apic.  That is, I think you should just enable APIC when
using VBox.

-- 
John Baldwin