Bug 124318

Summary:	2006.0 nosmp boot option doesnt work on vmware esx
Product:	Gentoo Release Media	Reporter:	Matthew Marlowe (RETIRED) <mattm>
Component:	Everything	Assignee:	Gentoo Release Team <releng>
Status:	RESOLVED CANTFIX
Severity:	minor
Priority:	High
Version:	2006.0
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Matthew Marlowe (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2006-02-27 16:11:53 UTC

vmware esx recommends that operating systems disable all smp functionality when installing on single processor virtual machines (which is the recommended configuration for 2 processor hosts, by far the most common). 

I dont know how much of a bug this is, but the 2006.0 x86 livecd basically crashes upon bootup with the nosmp livecd kernel option under vmware esx.  There are several messeges about IOAPIC interrupts (I didnt copy down the errors).  Just thought that I should log this bug for anyone else who encounters it.

Booting up with no user supplied options still works, so this isnt a show stopper .

Comment 1 Chris Gianelloni (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2006-03-03 11:13:16 UTC

Using nosmp on a system with a "broken" local APIC like VMWare requires also using the "nolapic" and "noapic" options along-side "nosmp"...  There isn't much we can do about the functionality provided by VMWare itself, so I'm going to mark this as CANTFIX, but thanks for reporting it.  Hopefully it will help others in the same situation.