VirtualBox causes GPE storm on macbook pro 5,2

[Jeroen Maris]

I used Ubuntu 9.04 on my MacbookPro 5,2 without many problems (stock kernel 2.6.28.x). Since I switched to ArchLinux, using kernel 2.3.30.5, I get GPE storm errors as soon as I start a VirtualBox VM. The exact error is "ACPI: EC: GPE storm detected, transactions will use polling mode". Other errors then show up in dmesg, like: "CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 15000 nsec"

My host machine pretty much keeps working as expected, except for the clock which starts counting irregularly and skipping a few seconds every time. My virtual machines become agonizing slow at startup and the GUI's from both my ubuntu guests as the windows xp guests freeze for approximately 5 seconds after every 30 seconds, making them practically unusable.

I've tried playing with hpet=disable; acpi_osi=Darwin; leaving reboot=pci out of kernel parameters (I need that parameter for rebooting to work) and others, but to no avail. I also tried the async parameter for the vboxdrv, but that didn't do any good either.

A pfSense guest VM also starts spawning these messages: "calcru: runtime went backwards from 1019 usec to 983 usec for pid 37 (bufdaemon)". Those messages normally don't appear in the console. Sometimes, the pfsense's kernel panics during boot, so I have to restart the VM.

[Jeroen Maris]

dmesg output from my MBP5,2 after GPE storm has occurred