Re: FC4 crashes repeatedly on Supermicro AS1020A-T dual-core Opterons, SMP

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

Bill Davidsen wrote:

> Michal Szymanski wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 10:18:36AM -0500, Robert M. Hyatt wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> One note.  I am running on a quad 875 system, but am using Suse 
>>> rather than FC4.  It is running perfectly reliable (this is a 4 cpu, 
>>> dual-core, 2.2ghz box, 8 processors total).  I had problems with FC4 
>>> myself, although it runs perfectly on my normal dual xeon boxes...
>>>
>>> On Fri, 5 May 2006, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>>> Michal Szymanski wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have recently purchased three Supermicro AS1020A-T servers equipped
>>>>> with two dual-core Opterons 280 each. H8DAR-T motherboards, 8 or 
>>>>> 12 GB
>>>>> RAM. The systems carry FC4 x86_64 with proprietary driver (made by
>>>>> Adaptec) for the onboard Marvell 88SX6041 SATA Controller. Original
>>>>> (install) kernel 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp - unfortunately not 
>>>>> upgradable due
>>>>> to the lack of the SATA driver for other kernel versions.
>>>>>
>>>>> All systems crash (either hang with some "machine check exception"
>>>>> kernel messages or reset) when loaded with repeating runs of 
>>>>> 1.3gb, CPU
>>>>> intensive with some I/O. I run 2 or 4 jobs simultaneously and they 
>>>>> had
>>>>> never survived more than a few hours.
>>>>> ...
>>>>> 2. I ran non-SMP 2.6.11 kernel (with Adaptec driver) on another 
>>>>> machine.
>>>>> There have been two test repeating 1.3g jobs running on it (each 
>>>>> getting 50%
>>>>> of the single CPU used by the system) for over 50 hours now, no 
>>>>> crashes.
>>>>> Also, a single test job running on SMP kernel gave no crashes in 
>>>>> 24 hours.
>>>>>
>>>>>       
>>>>
>>>> What happens if you use only one CPU? Either with a uni kernel (you 
>>>> should have gotten one) or "maxcpus=1" in the boot commands. You 
>>>> are running a custom kernel with custom drivers, so you really 
>>>> should be asking the supplier, all we can do is suggest things 
>>>> which might provide extra information.
>>>>     
>>>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I got 3 copies of Roberts' message but none of Bill's :-)
>>
>> Still, I don't quite understand Bill's question ("What happens if you
>> use only one CPU?"). The answer is quoted just above this question!
>> There were no crashes with the system running on non-SMP kernel.
>>  
>>
>
> It's a great answer, but not to my question. I wasn't asking what 
> happens with a different kernel, but what happens when you run the SMP 
> kernel and ==>use<== only one CPU by setting the max cpu to one. The 
> uni kernel doesn't have a lot of code in an SMP kernel, so it haides a 
> lot of possible questions. 


s/haides/hides/

Yes, I know my original question wasn't explicit on what I was asking, 
it's just the first thing I would have tried because I wouldn't have 
that uni kernel around.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979