Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 17:27:39 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Bob Van Valzah <Bob@Talarian.Com> Cc: smp@FreeBSD.Org Subject: RE: Volunteering: Old fart with old CPUs Message-ID: <XFMail.020220172739.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <3C6D5DC3.6060108@Talarian.Com>
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On 15-Feb-02 Bob Van Valzah wrote: > I just got back from BSDCon where I heard several folks working on SMPng > asking for volunteers. > > My "day job" prevents me doing things like writing code or doing serious > debugging, but I think I might still be able to help the SMPng cause. (I > actually did one of the early MP Unix implementations on Gould hardware > back in 1983, but I haven't kept current.) So I guess you could say that > I understand the problem space and I'm excited about what you're trying > to do for 5.0, but I'm rusty. > > I haven't written a line of kernel code in over 10 years, so I'm > thinking I might be most helpful on testing, benchmarking, or profiling > work. I'm able to use ddb to help you figure out what's going on, but I > probably can't help you figure out how to fix it. I'm not likely to have > big chunks of time to work on SMPng, but I can probably muster a steady > stream of small blocks of time. > > I have an old dual PII-233 box sitting around and I'd be glad to put it > to work if that'd help in some way. (My experience in the past has been > that older, slower machines sometimes shake out latent bugs that you > don't hit on modern screamers.) > > I could probably do something like regular builds from -CURRENT and run > various benchmarks or torture tests. I'd be happy to run regular > benchmarks against 3.x, 4.x, other BSDs, Linux or whatever. Testing is a big help, yes. :) > Also, I think I could do a decent job of SMP "data mining" if that'd > help. For example, I might be able to cobble together some tools to > analyze lock counters or other statistics. > > I see "profiling is broken" on the known issues list. I might be able to > tackle that, but don't want to bite off more that I can chew--esp. not > for my first attempt. How badly broken is it? Actually, I'm not exactly sure how broken it really is. If you could figure out how kernel profiling works and then figure out if it is actually broken or not, that would be great. :) > So I'm leaving myself open for suggestions here. Please let me know > what'd be most helpful. I'll try to pitch in where I can. > > Thanks, > > Bob -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
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