SLE12 SP3 Installation on large POWER8 and POWER9 Systems may fail with a call trace

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 3 (SLES 12 SP3) (ppc64le)

Situation

Installing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3 on a POWER8 or POWER9 system with more than 96 cores and / or more than 8TB memory may fail with call traces starting with:

    _cpu_up: attempt to bring up CPU nnnn failed
    ------------[ cut here ]------------
    WARNING: at ../mm/vmalloc.c:2423

Resolution

Take the following steps:

Set the LPAR profile to a smaller configuration than 96 cores and 8TB memory
Install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3.
Upgrade the system to the latest kernel level available through the regular SUSE update channels.
Set the LPAR profile back to the actual configuration.
Reboot the System into the updated configuration.

Cause

During Installation the kernel ran into a depleted vmalloc space for the percpu backing storage. This stems from an issue on the architecture which only applies to PPC and is resolved with the Update Kernel.

Disclaimer

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