[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#782383: Panic: "System without CMOS RTC must be booted from EFI" i.c.w. HP servers

[Hans van Kranenburg]

Package: xen-hypervisor-4.4-amd64
Version: 4.4.1-8
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

The Xen hypervisor in Debian Jessie does not boot on recent HP server 
hardware (e.g. the current dl360 gen9 series) when using normal "legacy" 
boot.

During boot, it panics with the message "System without CMOS RTC must be 
booted from EFI".

This message was introduced in upstream commit f745566, "x86: honor ACPI 
indicating absence of CMOS RTC". After reports that this breaks booting 
on HP servers, because the hardware incorrectly sets the CMOS RTC Not 
Present flag, a workaround was made in e9425f05, "x86/ACPI: allow CMOS 
RTC use even when ACPI says there is none".

The Xen version that the debian packages are based on is created from a 
release in between these two commits.

For our own use, I rebuilt the packages including a patch that reverts 
f745566, instead of applying the solution in e9425f05, because that 
solution already depends on other new commits.

Please consider doing a similar thing in the Debian packages for Jessie, 
as it will help to prevent scaring people away from choosing Debian to 
run Xen on their servers for the next few years. :-)

The simple revert-patch I'm using is attached.

Thanks,

-- 
Hans van Kranenburg - System / Network Engineer
T +31 (0)10 2760434 | hans.van.kranenburg at mendix.com | www.mendix.com
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