Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 11:05:18 -0500 From: "Duncan, Eric A." <eric@cdc.net> To: <freebsd-smp@freebsd.org> Subject: Serious SMP problems on Dell PE 2450 dual P-IIIs 733mhz Message-ID: <NDBBIMCDELJLMJDJPOFICEONCDAA.eric@cdc.net>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Basically, I enable SMP support and the system hangs on the PCI probing on boot up. I originally wanted to install 3.4, but had to install 4.0 which I seem to like more now (read below). Here's the configuration: Dell Power Edge 2450 Dual 733mhz 133mhz bus P-IIIs 512megs Adaptec 7899 U2W SCSI (2940 ahc driver) ^- Important info below. Here's the story: FreeBSD 3.4 ---------------- Upon the setup from the 3.4 floppies (ftp install), the kernel never found the SCSI controller (ahc0). It never even probed it during the PCI scan. I even tried a 3.3-STABLE kernel without success. I built a custom kernel on another box including the ahc0 driver. I even tried wiring down devices, calling scsibus, setting them manually, setting with '?'s. I tried it all and built a new kernel every time. Even making sure the boot loader wasn't di'ing it. All kernels were gzipped as kernel.gz and replaced the kernel.gz off of the boot floppies at first. This was how I was able to boot the new kernel off of the floppies. I even tried downloading and created the ISOs for the 3.4 and 4.0 kernels without success. The ahc controller was never probed upon boot. It never even showed 'ahc0: not found' when I had it compiled in the kernel. Nothing. Very odd! FreeBSD 4.0 ---------------- Immediately FBSD4 found the ahc0 controller and loaded the correct driver. It found my tape backup devices, ata cdrom, and 2 da 18gig SCSI drives without any problems. I continued to install the kernel, ports, packages, etc. The system is running great with all devices configured! I tried to build a custom kernel. To disable drivers and clean up the kernel, firewall, smp, etc. Everything was going great and running smooth. Until the SMP part. As I mentioned above, the kernel halts, with no errors, it simply locks the machine up while booting. I tried even using the GENERIC kernel, which enables a lot and works just fine. Until I simply enable SMP support. And example SMP setup I tried is (which seems to be what the system asks for): options SMP options APIC_IO options NCPU=2 options NBUS=4 options NAPIC=2 options NINTR=28 Yes, I tried disabling all but the first two lines. The kernel would halt immediately telling me I has more then 1 apic and I had to rebuild my kernel (it numbered NAPIC=2 on the error). It also reported back errors that I had 4 buses and to increase my NBUS=4 and that I had 28 intr and to increase NINTR to 28. I even tried to build a very minimal kernel, disabling everything but the SMP. Same results. It locks up every time after the ISA configuration of devices, before the 'waiting 15seconds for scsi devices to settle' statement. Now, I haven't tried OVER SIZING any of the above. I had to ship the servers off today. But I will be back working on them in a few days and would love any advice. Another odd story. Just for argument sake, I compiled a 3.3-STABLE kernel with SMP support with the params above, and the floppies loaded it correctly enabling both CPU0 and CPU1 on boot! Just no SCSI card/Harddrives were found because of the 3.x problem of not detecting my SCSI board. So, I now have a 3.x kernel with SMP but no HD. And a 4.0 kernel with HDs, but no SMP support. Yes, I tried changing all sorts of settings in the BIOS and Utility config. Changing mem IOs, IRQs, disabling the second bus, etc etc etc. Everything combination I can think of. Disabling the IDE bus (used for the CDROM), disabling the floppy, etc. I had another PowerEdge 2450 with dual P-IIIs 600mhz and same controller, but with embedded RAID from Dell. The 3.3-KERNEL never found the HDs, and the 4.0 kernel never enabled the SMP. Same results so it isn't a hardware fault I believe. HELP! A $1,200 second CPU laying to waste in this system isn't too good at all. Thanks in advance, Eric Duncan eduncan@idealmusic.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?NDBBIMCDELJLMJDJPOFICEONCDAA.eric>