[nycbug-talk] New box is killing me

[mlists at bizintegrators.com]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 09:22:16AM -0500, Dan Casey wrote:
> - "Hightpoint-tech RocketRaid 1640"
> - All 4 drives are 80G Western Digital SATA
> 
> Yeah someone else mentioned that "C" column when running top was for
> HyperThreading and not actually 2 processors. During boot I see a line about
> SMP 2 CPUs, but now that I look above that it says "Hyperthreading: 2
> Logical CPUs".

Look around when in BIOS, there could be that you need to
enable/change something else when you enable hyperthreading. Sometimes
there is also a OS option, with choices like Windows, Linux, SCO,
other, and so on. Try using Linux, or other, or if not, try them
all, while also enabling hyperthreading in FreeBSD kernel. There might
be more CPU options also, and maybe a particular combination will make
the OS work fine.

I also remember that to enable hyperthreading you need to comment out
two lines, one smp and one a few lines below, but this might be for 4.x
series, or maybe I'm mixing it all up.

> 
> Since my last message I've compiled a GENERIC kernel, but with the SMP line
> commented out. Now that "C" column is missing like I'm used to. Also when I
> shut down (or reboot) I don't get kernel errors. It gets past the syncing
> disks part without any errors (waits on 1 buffer 3 times), then continues.
> It gets up to the part where it says Uptime <time> and then locks up w/out
> any error messages. Still not sure what to do about all this.

This doesn't sound related to the first (hyperthreading) problem.
Maybe something with the RAID itself, or the driver.. Try stress
testing the RAID from the OS to see if it locks up there also.

> 
> I'm not sure If I'm going in the right direction here or not.. Will I be
> limiting my CPU's performance by disabling hyperthreading?

You could be having less performance, I don't have enough FBSD usage
or clue to know. The other thing is, if you run apps that are not CPU
bound, you might be fine running without hyperthreads.

> 
> I would jump to 5.3 but the drivers for the readme for the raid drivers say
> its for 4.3 - 5.2.1. I'm sure that could very well just be due to the time
> in which the file was published, but I really don't want to waste the
> bandwidth doing another ftp install, and have to jump back down.
> 
> Thanks for your help!

Good luck.

> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Charles Sprickman" <spork at bway.net>
> To: <mlists at bizintegrators.com>
> Cc: <talk at lists.nycbug.org>
> Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2004 2:04 AM
> Subject: Re: [nycbug-talk] New box is killing me
> 
> 
> > On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 mlists at bizintegrators.com wrote:
> >
> > > Maybe disable hyperthreading in BIOS..
> >
> > Or go to something more recent.  5.2.1 is beta quality at best.  I
> > believe 5.3 is now available.  What type of raid controller are you using?
> >

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