First boot OK, subsequent boot no event timer?

[Tsaukpaetra]

So I recently got a purpose-built mini PC (touted to be pfSense compatible) for the purpose of replacing my aging WRT54G. Installed OPNsense and WHOA! Much amazing!

However, when I rebooted the kernel immediately panics after bootloader, mentioning that acpi0 could not allocate interrupt because it already exists(?), thus leaving no event timer sources.

If I boot off the live cd and import the config from the hard drive, everything is hunky-dory, minus the fact that things aren't being persisted (naturally). This happens in the base ISO for 20.1 and 20.7, and is 100% reproducible by simply rebooting after the first boot.

I don't update or do anything other than import my config file (which, strangely enough, seems to cause all the interfaces to have random mac addresses each time  ).

Is there some kind of "break the ACPI and MAC addresses" setting I accidentally toggled?

[darkain]

Is this older AMD hardware, like an Athlon X4 or similar/older era?

[Tsaukpaetra]

No, it's an i5, from this https://www.newegg.com/i5-j1900-8g128g-wired/p/22Z-0058-003F2?Item=9SIACP1BC36467

Actually, I think I may have pinpointed it. There was a tunable I added (off of advice from the Internet 🙄 ) because for some reason enabling fastboot caused the kernel to stall on an unattached keyboard device (that didn't exist ever). I'm going to remove that and see if that works.

Side note: My MAC address issue might be because I'm using a bridge interface for the LAN (and tying three ports to that bridge). Does it generate a new MAC every boot because I left the Mac Spoof field blank?

Edit: Yep, that was it. Who knew disabling ACPI .... disabled it? 🤦‍♂️