Re: install debian on Alphaserver DS20

["Thomas W." <kirk@colinet.de>]

Hi,

> On Thu, Jul 27, 2000 at 06:03:44PM -0500, Stefano Curtarolo wrote:
> > 
> > > Huh ? Any compelling reson, why a fairly recent 2.2 kernel ( I use 2.2.15 )
> > > on a Tsunami arch ?
> > 
> > Tsunamy arch IRQ handling was broken for more than 2 CPUS, until
> > 2.4.0-test2 or test3. You get huge troubles with a 4(+)CPUS machine.
> 
> 2.2.x kernels used only CPU 0 for interrupt handling on Alpha; it's
> only with 2.4.x that interrupts were able to be delivered to other
> CPUs on Alpha.

Ahh. I didn't know that. Well, I begin to see *good* resons to move to
2.4, since I have a bunch of devices running of 4 SCSI channels
doing *lots* of stuff - shame on me, I never checked how the
interrupts got handled.
Well, for the other problem - I don't have it. Only two CPU's here ;-(

I once saw a ES40 on a computer show - let me tell you, the d**n thing
was too heavy to be carried away by me

8-)

Anyway, as for the spinlocks getting stuck sometimes in 2.2.x, is this
fixed in 2.4 ( I have checked some of the patches, but by far not all ) ?
Reading Alan Cox' ToDo list in the kernel-mailing list somewhat frightens
me.
However, it is hard to tell, how much of it is Alpha-related, since
Alan is - ahem - somewhat x86-centric for that matter ;-)

Any serious problems so far in practice ? I would like to try out some
of the new things in 2.4...

Regards,
Thomas Weyergraf ( on late hours again ...)

-- 
Thomas Weyergraf                                                kirk@colinet.de
My Favorite IA64 Opcode-guess ( see arch/ia64/lib/memset.S )
"br.ret.spnt.few" - got back from getting beer, did not spend a lot.