SLES11SP1 xen kernel does not write a dump on a HP BL685c G7

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1

Situation

After configuring kernel dumps and testing the settings the system does not write a core dump to the desired location but hangs instead with messages similar to:

[    0.004000] 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.
[    0.004000]
[    0.004000] Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.32.49-0.3-default #1
[    0.004000] Call Trace:
[    0.004000] [<ffffffff810061dc>] dump_trace+0x6c/0x2d0
[    0.004000] [<ffffffff8139aee6>] dump_stack+0x69/0x73
[    0.004000] [<ffffffff8139af68>] panic+0x78/0x19b
[    0.004000] [<ffffffff8195273a>] check_timer+0x448/0x5d8

The default kernel writes the dump without problems. So far this issue was seen on HP BL685c G7 systems but may not be limited to.

Resolution

Please add the option cpuidle=0 to the XEN hypervisor entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst as shown below:

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: xen###
title Xen -- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1
    root (hd1,0)
    kernel /xen.gz vga=mode-791 crashkernel=128M@16M cpuidle=0
    module /vmlinuz-xen root=/dev/system/root resume=/dev/system/swap splash=verbose showopts vga=791
    module /initrd-xen

Also ensure to allocate sufficient memory to the crashkernel= settings else the dump will abort with an out of memory error message.

Cause

This issue is probably related to the fact that the HPET is not being restored at boot time state.
Thus, the hypervisor needs to be disabled before transferring control to the new kernel (that is the dump-capture kernel).

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