On Thu, 19 Jun 2008, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:

> >  With such a configuration the "x86: I/O APIC: timer through 8259A
> > second-chance" patch should not matter, because the only change it
> > introduces is an attempt to try the same I/O APIC pin again, but with the
> > IRQ0 line of the master 8259A enabled.  That's not a terribly unusual
> > configuration and nothing should get confused in the system.
>
> But it _does_ get confused, really.

 Something certainly gets confused, but so far I am not sure which bit
exactly it is, are you?

> >  Barring the unlikely possibility of the 8259A actually being wired to
> > INTIN2 of the I/O APIC I can see two possible explanations:
> >
> > 1. The 8259A interrupt actually escapes to the CPU somehow and is handled
> >    as an ExtINTA interrupt.  This would make the code in check_timer()
> >    decide it has found a working configuration, while actually it has been
> >    fooled.
[...]
> Here you go:
>
> [    0.108006] ..TIMER: vector=0x30 apic1=0 pin1=2 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
> [    0.108006] ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
> [    0.108006] ...trying to set up timer (IRQ0) through the 8259A ... <3>
> [    0.108006] ..... (found apic 0 pin 2) ...<3> works.
>
> The full dmesg is at: http://www.sisk.pl/kernel/debug/20080618/dmesg-1.log

Thanks.  In this case I suspect the case #1 quoted above happens, that is
the 8259A manages to deliver its interrupt somehow.  Note at this stage it
is meant to be in the AEOI mode, so it can happily resubmit the interrupt
indefinitely with no additional handling as long as it receives INTA
cycles.

Can you please try the patch below on top of "x86: I/O APIC: timer
through 8259A second-chance" to see whether my hypothesis is true?  It
modifies the through-8259A setup path so that the APIC input gets masked,
but the 8259A has the timer interrupt still enabled.  Let me know how the
timer interrupt is routed in this case.
Bisected-by: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
Tested-by: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>