I upgraded my system to a new Dell T5500. However, I discovered that I can no longer boot Tiny Core 2.2 within VMware Server 1.0.9 (TC 1.4.3 works fine). It crashes with the following error text:
invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP
last sysfs file:
Modules linked in:
Pid: 17, comm: cryptomgr_test Not tainted (2.6.29.1-tinycore #1337) VMware Virtual Platform
...
SNIP
...
note: cryptomgr_test[17] exited with preempt_count 1
I traced the problem to the CONFIG_CRYPTO_CRC32C_INTEL kernel config option. The help for this option reads:
In Intel processor with SSE4.2 supported, the processor will support CRC32C implementation using hardware accelerated CRC32 instruction. This option will create 'crc32c-intel' module, which will enable any routine to use the CRC32 instruction to gain performance compared with software implementation. Module will be crc32c-intel.
When I remove this option, Tiny Core boots perfectly. My shiny new core i7 processor supports this feature. My guess is that the guest OS (Tiny Core) recognizes this when querying the CPU and uses the new hardware accelerated CRC32 instruction, although I'm not sure why since the "processor family" of TC is set to i486. It seems that VMware Server cannot handle this instruction and kills the VM. As far as I can tell, VMware Server 1.0.9 does not allow the masking of CPUID, either. The only "advanced" option available is to disable acceleration, and that doesn't help.
If someone has a better solution, please let me know. Otherwise, this post can serve as a hint to anyone who encounters this problem.
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