SMP Woes

Bobby Hitt
2004-04-22T15:50:23Z

Hello,

I recently posted this message to the linux-kernel list:
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I have an ASUS CUV4XD dual CPU mobo that I've been using with Window 2000
Professional for the last two years. It worked fine, W2K used both CPUs with
no problems whatsoever. I recently upgraded my W2K system, and decided to
use the ASUS board in a system I was building to use as a Linux gateway. The
problem I'm having is the system refuses to boot when I created a kernel
with SMP support. If I turn off SMP and rebuild the kernel, boots fine. I
have two other SMP systems, very old mother boards, 5+ years old. They both
run Linux fine with SMP. I even took the source tree from a working system,
built a new kernel, locks up on bootup. The last message displayed :

Total of 2 processors activated ( 3186.68 BogoMIPS)
Enabling IO-APIC IRQs
Setting 2 in the phys_id_present_map
... changing IO-APIC physical APIC ID to 2 ... ok.

I contacted Alan Cox about this, he said he was working on his MBa and
hadn't been involved with kernel development for a while. He suggest adding:

append="noapic pci=usepirqmask"

to the lilo.conf file, which I did. No change.

Any body have similar problems or suggestions?
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This was for kernel 2.4.23.

I've since figured out that problem. I found that the BIOS had an option
"MPS 1/4 Support" which was checked. Turned that off, and now the system
boots fine, but now have a new problem with my RAID configuration. When
"raidstart /dev/md0" runs, it gives this error:

cannot determine md version: 6

The only thing I've done is to enable smp support in the kernel, which
brings up another issue. I had just installed the source tree for 2.4.26.
smp support was already checked, so all I did was to enable raid, reiserfs
support, etc. I didn't turn on anything un-necessary. With "vga=791" set in
the lilo.conf file, on reboot now all I get is a black screen and system
lockup. When I went back to turn off smp, now the build fails with lots of
"num_cpus" (or close to that) appear everywhere. The only way I can now
build a new kernel is to save my .config file, wipe the directory,
re-install the source tree, copy my .config file back and rebuild. With
regard to the display issue, I'll disable the display for now. The raid
issue is the main thing.

TIA,

Bobby