Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: qemu-kvm

Booting Centos 4 with the default 2.6.9 kernel I get a sporadic error
maybe ~5% of the time:

ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=2 pin2=-1
..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
...trying to set up timer (IRQ0) through the 8259A ... failed
...trying to set up timer as Virtual Wire IRQ... failed.
...trying to set up timer as ExtINT IRQ... failed :(.
Kernel panic - not syncing: IO-APIC + timer doesn't work! Boot with apic=debug 
and send a report.  Then try booting with the 'noapic' option

This issue has been reported in the past on the linux-kvm mailing list but no 
resolution was found.[1]
It appears that this bug may in fact be a bug handling interrupts on boot in 
older kernels.[2] Interrupts were meant to be disabled in a 30ms window, but 
were not. An interrupt arriving in this time will cause the kernel boot to 
fail. Virtualization may make it more likely that this bug will appear now than 
it used to on real hardware, since the model in which interrupts are delivered 
to the kernel from the "hardware" is different. If this diagnosis is correct, 
then the issue is very difficult to fix since it would require detecting that a 
pre-2.6.24 kernel is in use, and managing the boot process so no interrupt is 
delivered in the problematic window. The alternative is to just accept that 
pre-2.6.24 kernels may have sporadic boot failures, and to make this 
information available so that users who run into the issue can either patch or 
update the kernel that they are using.

[1] http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kvm/2008/11/12/4077354/thread
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/git-commits-h...@vger.kernel.org/msg30813.html

** Affects: qemu-kvm (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
qemu-kvm and guest kernel < 2.6.24 sporadic boot fail: Kernel panic - not 
syncing: IO-APIC + timer doesn't work!
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/559088
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