8.141 (x86 Only) Solaris 11 Release 2011.11 Guest Hangs at Boot

When booting a virtual machine with Oracle Solaris 11 Release 2011.11, the guest OS hangs. This is caused by a Solaris bug where interrupt storms occur on Intel systems based on Sandy bridge and Westmere CPUs. The issue has been fixed in Solaris 11 2011.11 SRU 2a.

Workaround: To make Solaris 11 2011.11 run on Oracle VM 3.4, use the SRU 2a, or apply the following manual fix to the GA release:

  1. At boot, edit the grub menu: append the -kd kernel boot parameter. This runs the Solaris kernel debugger.

  2. In the kernel debugger, enter the following commands:

    [0]> ::bp pcplusmp`apic_clkinit
    [0]> :c
    kmdb: stop at pcplusmp`apic_clkinit
    kmdb: target stopped at: pcplusmp`apic_clkinit: pushq %rbp
    [0]> apic_timer_preferred_mode/W 0
    pcplusmp`apic_timer_preferred_mode:    0x2    =    0x0
    [0]> :c
  3. Continue the system boot sequence.

  4. When Solaris has been installed and has successfully booted, make this fix persistent by adding the following line to /etc/system:

    set pcplusmp:apic_timer_preferred_mode = 0x0

For more information, please consult the Support Note with ID 1372094.1. You can also find this document by logging on to My Oracle Support and searching the knowledge base for 1372094.1.

Bug 13885097