Booting Xen on HP DL380 G5 at University of Canterbury

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[edit] Booting Xen on HP DL380 G5

[edit] Problem description

I encountered a weird problem with the gateway node, which has the following configuration:

  • Rack-mountable DL380 G5
  • No KVM connected.
  • HP iLO (Integrated Lights Out 2) is active - standard license: remote VGA access to system boot screen, virtual serial console boot+OS

The system boots fine if any of these conditions holds:

  • The system is booting a CentOS kernel (not Xen).
  • The serial console is active during the bootloader screen.

In other words, the problem occurs only when:

  • The system boots Xen (regardless of console setup - serial/vga).
  • Serial console is not active - either iLO is not connected at all, or there is no keyboard interaction at all.

The symptoms of the problem are:

  • Any attempt to probe for a parallel port freezes for about 20-30 minutes.

    Thus, if a service initialized during system boot waits for such a result (such as kudzu or cups), the system boot delays for this period of time.

  • The log is filled with spurious messages about USB devices being attached and disconnected. 
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 60
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: usb 5-2: USB disconnect, address 59
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: usb 5-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 61
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: usb 5-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: hub 5-2:1.0: USB hub found
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: hub 5-2:1.0: 7 ports detected
Apr  3 20:04:38 ucgridgw kernel: usb 5-1: USB disconnect, address 60
Apr  3 20:04:39 ucgridgw kernel: usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 62

Should be (CentOS): 

uhci_hcd 0000:01:04.4: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:01:04.4: irq 233, io base 00003800
uhci_hcd 0000:01:04.4: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5
uhci_hcd 0000:01:04.4: port count misdetected? forcing to 2 ports
hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 5-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using address 2
input: USB HID v1.01 Keyboard [HP Virtual Keyboard] on usb-0000:01:04.4-1
input: USB HID v1.01 Mouse [HP Virtual Keyboard] on usb-0000:01:04.4-1
usb 5-2: new full speed USB device using address 3
hub 5-2:1.0: USB hub found
hub 5-2:1.0: 7 ports detected


[edit] Solution

Is is not known what is the exact cause of the two symptoms, and whether they are related. They both appear to be an incompatibility between the embedded hardware and the Xen drivers. The problems can both be avoided by disabling the parallel port and USB controller modules in modprobe.conf: 

 alias usb-controller off
 alias uhci-hcd off
 alias uhci_hcd off
 
 alias char_major_6_* off
 alias parport_lowlevel off

BEWARE: Disabling USB may be a problem if we connect a KVM later - but then, it may be safe to re-enable USB

[edit] Serial console BIOS setup

As one possible solution, I investigated disabling the USB controller in the BIOS setup.

VGA BIOS Setup gives a big warning that this will cut out iLO. It really does (only keyboard, not VGA), but this setting can also be changed back and forth via the serial console command-line interface to BIOS:

  • Press F9 on serial console, then: 
 set config usb control usb disabled

or 

 set config usb control 2
  • Revert with 
 set config usb control 1 # (or usb enabled)

Other commands: 

 help set config
 show config usb control
 show config options # lists options

[edit] Xen serial console

The following GRUB configuration works for me to see Xen and Linux console messages on the serial console: 

title Xen 3.0.4 with vmlinuz-2.6.16.33-xen_3.0.4.1 with serial console
       kernel /boot/xen.gz console=com1 com1=38400,8n1
       module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.16.33-xen_3.0.4.1 ro root=LABEL=/ console=tty0 console=ttyS0
       module /boot/initrd-2.6.16.33-xen_3.0.4.1.img

Bonus: switch between Linux and Xen console with 3x Ctrl-A

[edit] Network devices

Onboard ethernet devices (eth0 and eth1, controlled by bnx2): 

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 12)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 12)

Expansion card NC340T PCI-X 4-port 1000T GigE (eth2,3,4,5, controlled by e1000) 

13:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 03)
13:04.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 03)
13:06.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 03)
13:06.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 03)
The pciback magic for the 4 ports on the expansion card is 
modprobe pciback 'hide=(0000:13:04.0)(0000:13:04.1)(0000:13:06.0)(0000:13:06.1)'

Then, NGData can be created with the imported pci devices with 

xm create -c NGData pci=13:04.0 pci=13:04.1
This works straight out of the box with the CentOS 5 XenU kernel.

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