A HPET timer can be started when HPET is not yet
enabled. This will not generate an interrupt
to the guest, but causes problems when HPET is later
enabled.
A timer that is created and expires at least once before
HPET is enabled will have an initialized comparator based
on a hpet_offset of 0 (uninitialized). When HPET is
enabled, hpet_set_timer() is called a second time, which
modifies the timer expiry to a time based on the
difference between current ticks (measured with the
newly initialized hpet_offset) and the timer's
comparator (which was generated before hpet_offset was
initialized). This results in a long period of no HPET
timer ticks.
When this occurs with a CentOS 5.x guest, the guest
may not receive timer interrupts during its narrow
timer check window and panic on boot.
Signed-off-by: Matt Lupfer <mlupfer@ddn.com>
Acked-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
c36ad13fe9