Hi,
> Gerd mentioned this in the relevant bz:
>
> Note: root cause for the initrd issue noted in comment 5 is seabios
> running into problems with ehci -> io errors -> corrupted initrd.
> Sometimes it doesn't boot at all, probably in case the io errors
> happen to hit the kernel not the initrd.
>
> This seems to be the last piece of information we have had that is closest
> to the root cause.
seabios used to prefer pmtimer back then for timekeeping then because it
has a fixed frequency. Doing tsc calibration can easily be /way/ off in
a virtual machine on a loaded host.
Meanwhile seabios got support for reading the tsc frequency via cpuid
(if invtsc is available) or via kvmclock. If that works seabios will
prefer the tsc for timekeeping.
So, when trying to reproduce the failure for analysis you have to either
use an old seabios version, or turn off kvmclock + invtsc support,
otherwise seabios will not use the pmtimer in the first place.
You should have this line in the firmware log:
Using pmtimer, ioport 0x608
HTH & take care,
Gerd
