# Freebsd on NSA 7130 (NEXCOM)



## AmbrSb (Aug 27, 2017)

Hey all,

We are trying to boot FreeBSD on NSA 7130.

The kernel panics in the boot process, with the following error message:

https://ibb.co/fSNRbk

Any ideas on how to circumvent this problem?

Thanks in advance


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## Phishfry (Aug 27, 2017)

Looks like an ACPI error with the interupts.

http://www.pl.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/acpi-debug.html

You could pass this through at the loader. On bootup at beastie menu pick #3

```
set hint.apic.0.disabled="1"
```


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## Phishfry (Aug 27, 2017)

I would also hit the BIOS and make sure that it all looks right.

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?acpi(4)

Some things I would fiddle with include C states and disabling HyperThreading for experimenting.

Since it seems to be related to irq16, which is your SATA controller I would also make sure that hard drive mode is set to AHCI instead of IDE.


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## Phishfry (Aug 27, 2017)

So after some reading it appears that the machine has run out of IRQ's. The fact that it shows up under SATA controller could just be that SATA was the next in line for an interrupt and none were available.

Something tells me your NIC's are eating up the IRQ's. This symptom seems to hit with many IRQ interfaces on a machine:

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/2016-September/023914.html
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2015-July/048011.html


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## Phishfry (Aug 28, 2017)

I do notice that vgapci0 using irq 16 on bus pci7 seems to be grabbing the interrupt before ahci0 SATA controller on pci0 using irq16
I still think its the same symptom. Network interfaces are using all the irq's.
Maybe quirky ACPI bios. Have you looked for newest firmware?
I know these OEM'ers don't offer much for public download support.
Can you try and disable the NIC's in the bios? I see igb8 up there. How many interfaces does it have?


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## AmbrSb (Aug 28, 2017)

Thank you Phishfry for your help. As you said the system had run out of IRQs.
So I did a few tests that show limiting *hw.igb.num_queues* to a maximum of 3 solves the problem.

So the system is now up and running. But I am concerned about the performance implications of setting just 1 queue (CPU core) per interface.

This system has 22 interfaces (10 x 1Gb and 12 x 10Gb), and 2 x Xeon processors with a total of 24 processing threads.

Does this mean that (assuming all net interfaces are being used)  *hw.igb.num_queues*=1 should be OK?


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## Phishfry (Aug 28, 2017)

This would be a good question for IRC or mailing lists. It is well above my skills to offer such advice...
Glad you got it running though. It is a sweet ride.


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