Missing kernel vserver-sparc64-smp?

[Sander Marechal <s.marechal@jejik.com>]

Hello,

Sun Microsystems has recently donated a very nice machine to my FOSS
project (http://www.officeshots.org). It has four TI UltraSparc IIIi
processors and 8 GB RAM. At the moment it is running Debian Lenny with
the sparc64-smp kernel.

I want to run multiple virtual machines on it but there aren't many
solutions available on sparc64. I found one strange thing though. Debian
Lenny ships with SMP and uniprocessor kernels for sparc64, but the
vserver enabled kernel is only shipped as uniprocessor, not as an SMP
kernel. Here's what I have available according to Aptitude:

p   linux-image-2.6-sparc64
  - Linux 2.6 image on uniprocessor 64-bit UltraSPARC

i   linux-image-2.6-sparc64-smp
  - Linux 2.6 image on multiprocessor 64-bit UltraSPARC

p   linux-image-2.6-vserver-sparc64
  - Linux 2.6 image on uniprocessor 64-bit UltraSPARC, Linux-VServer
support

Why is vserver only shipped as uniprocessor? Also, why are there
separate smp and uniprocessor kernels at all for sparc64? I was under
the impression that smp_alternatives has made this practice obsolete
since Debian Etch, or does smp_alternatives only work on x86 and x86-64?

Kind regards,

-- 
Sander Marechal
Lone Wolves Foundation
http://www.jejik.com