Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 08:35:55 +0100 From: Paolo Tealdi <tealdi@sb.polito.it> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Subject: Compaq DL370 [long] Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.0.20001109083543.00a9a6a0@averroe.polito.it>
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As i already asked in the list, i'm trying to understand if FreeBSD support the hardware in subject. I tried to install FreeBSD on a system at my vendor's home and i found some interesting (and funny) things. The system was a single / double processor 733 MHz 128 MB memory standard COMPAQ SCSI controller (symbios) standard COMPAQ ETHERNET controller S.O. : FBSD 4.1 RELEASE 1) First, i tried to start booting directly from Fbsd CDROM. The system seemed to start, system recognized the scsi controller, but when checked the hard disk suddendly presented an error (seemed a parity error on SCSI, if i remember well )and the installation program aborted as it didn't find any disk. 2)consequently I loaded the COMPAQ SYSTEM INSTALLATION CDROM, I configured the system for an "other operating system" and i tried again to start with FreeBSD CDROM. This time all went OK. I installed the system, booted sometimes and all seemed well (also network controller was found). 3) Unfortunately the hardware the vender gave me was a single processor but i would like to buy a double processor system, so the vendor told me that he managed to receive one more and continue the test.And so we did. 4) Yesterday the vendor contacted me the processor was arrived and that i could go to do the final testing, and so i did. 5)The vendor told me that he didn't touched the original system (it is an NT guru and doesn't know ANYTHING about *nix ) and we installed the second processor. The system bootstrapped, all seemed to go well, FreeBSD seemed to recognized the second processor (the last thing i did the first time was to rebuild the kernel with SMP support, and i did it only decommenting the option SMP , option APIC and default for NPROCS ... copying GENERIC configuration) but when it tried to load the root partition again i found the original error (parity on SCSI bus). 6) This time i suggested that there was an hardware problem, so we tried to install NT4 .After one hour of installation (it's not so quick as FBSD) the NT4 server seemed to be installed OK, without any error ( :-(( ) . 7) So i reinstalled FBSD, after server setup installation with two processor and again all seemed to go OK. I recompiled the kernel (again decommenting only SMP options) and this time (for three consecutive time ) FBSD hung on boot after APIC check, one time messaging that it got an uninspected interrupt (43) (kernel config defaults are for 25 interrupts) and the others two without any message. 8) I stopped any kernel rebuilding, as i'm not so skilled with SMP installation. After this (very long) story i'd like to ask : a) All these things are normal for a double processor system ? b) Must i continue to try changing parameters in kernel configurations ? c) Can be an hardware problem ? d) It's normal for COMPAQ hardware ? e) There are significant change on 4.2 for SMP that can avoid this problems ? f) Anybody has found similar SCSI and double processor problems with Compaq or other vendors hardware ? I installed FBSD on a variety of servers ( mostly compatible) but never happened to me these things ... In any case i have never installed a double processor system. Sorry for the long story, and for my not so well english. ... Best regards, Paolo Tealdi Ing. Paolo Tealdi Library & News System Administrator Politecnico Torino Phone : +39-11-5646714 , FAX : +39-11-5646799 C.so D. degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino - ITALY Email: tealdi@sb.polito.it To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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