rtc: lost some interrupts at 1024Hz

Forums › Desktop computing › rtc: lost some interrupts at 1024Hz

ajobbins

Awesome
4841 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1097

Trusted

Subscriber

Topic # 18385 8-Jan-2008 20:59

I'm getting this in my trixbox VM. Can anyone tell me what it means?

I know RTC stands for real time clock. My clock battery is getting flat and the PC looses time quite badly. Is this likley to be causing the RTC messages?

It is making my VM run really slow.

grant_k

3539 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 125

Trusted

Reply # 103675 8-Jan-2008 21:21

The RTC on a PC's motherboard has the ability to generate Hardware Interrupts at a fixed rate of 1024Hz.

Which is many times faster than the standard BIOS clock of 18Hz (every 55ms) from Timer 0 of the 8254. It looks as though the VM is enabling this 1024Hz interrupt as a means of maintaining finer granularity of control over the various tasks that are running.

Possible reasons for this message:

1) Maybe you will be able to fix it by replacing the RTC battery, but I doubt it. Generally, the battery only comes into play when mains power is absent.

2) Maybe your motherboard/CPU combination is just too slow to run a VM with Trixbox running inside it.

3) Maybe you don't have enough RAM installed on the motherboard?

One of those 3 is likely to be the cause. Hopefully it's cause (1) or (3) or else you are up for a faster motherboard/CPU combo.

ajobbins

Awesome
4841 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1097

Trusted

Subscriber

Reply # 103678 8-Jan-2008 21:31

Its a Athlon XP 2400+ 2Ghz with 1.5GB of ram.

grant_k

3539 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 125

Trusted

Reply # 103681 8-Jan-2008 21:35

Hmmm, you would think it would have plenty of speed and RAM for the job then

As I see it, there are two other possible causes:

1) The VM software doesn't like your motherboard or Host OS

2) Trixbox doesn't like running in that particular VM. Didn't Tony Hughes mention something about that?

ajobbins

Awesome
4841 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1097

Trusted

Subscriber

Reply # 103685 8-Jan-2008 21:40

Vista business is the host OS. VMware gives the same results.

Its worked in the past just not recently.

grant_k

3539 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 125

Trusted

Reply # 103689 8-Jan-2008 21:46

adamj: Vista business is the host OS. VMware gives the same results.

Oh dear...

In that case, the finger is pointed squarely at Vista Business then isn't it?

Maybe it was just on the borderline of not working correctly all along, and some new piece of software you installed recently has pushed it over the edge?

Why not try installing XP on that system and then try running your VM/Trixbox under that?

10-to-1 it will work properly as XP is much less of a resource hog than Vista. ~~Better still use Linux~~ Oops, getting into Flame-bait territory there...

ajobbins

Awesome
4841 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1097

Trusted

Subscriber

Reply # 103690 8-Jan-2008 21:51

I had a dual boot XP partition but didnt use it so deleted it. Time to reinstall me thinks.