SMP Kernel
Hello,
it look like I need some ... help, piece of advice or a word of wisdom.
One PMac 7500 with a 604e is already working as a local squid proxy with
debian GNU/Linux woody.
Befor that I got a 8500 180MP doing the same job until a disc crash. It
worked with both cpus, but I lost that kernel :-(
Now after sampling some spare parts for a second PMac 7500 debian GNU/Linux
box, I tried to set up a working MP machine that should use a Asante
100MBit ethernet card.
Installation and working with woody and kernel 2.2.20 was easy and without
major problems. With dselect I found and installed a kernel-image 2.4.18
powerpc-smp. And three problems are hunting me now. Here they are:
Display:
I have an old 16" Apple Display, no multisync. It works great with kernel
2.2.20. Booting with kernel 2.4.18 shows only a flickering display (no
sync). Somewhere I read that the PMac 7500 has a broken OpenFirmware that
need to be patched. Done and no difference. It look like this patch came
from the NetBSD team and there I found that after the patch that
OpenFirmware will sync with 640*400 60HZ!?!?!
Is this true? Does kernel 2.4.18 only work with multisync monitors?
Ethernet:
The Asante 10/100 Fast Ethernet card works with kernel 2.2.20. I took one
or two reboots (no display, read the previous point) until I thought about
trrying the old mianboard MACE port. Right! Perhaps this is a bug.
With dmesg I found that kernel 2.4.18 find the Asante ethernet card (DEC
chip) at first (eth0) and the Mac MACE ethernet mainboard interface as the
second one (eth1). But when I installed woody the kernel 2.2.20 set up the
Apple MACE as eth0 and the Asante Dec chip as eth1. Vice Versa!!!
"OK" I thought, "change it". I type (without a display) the ifconfig orders
to change the interface. It worked until reboot. I tried kernel arguments
with bootx, no go. I edit the /etc/network/interfaces so that 2 equal
settings for eth0 and eth1 are found -> NO GO.
The question is: How can I tell kernel 2.4.18 to use the kernel 2.2.20
interface and network setting?
SMP:
After installing woody and setting up the base system I installed the
dselect kernel image 2.4.18 powerpc-smp. After I worked around the previous
bugs/features I found that I've got 2 CPUs working (cat /proc/cpuinfo
showed 2). Then I tried to get a better smp kernel with at least one error
less (display or ethernet card). To put it in a nutshell, neither kernel
2.2.20 nor the original or patched kernel 2.4.18 compiled to a working smp
kernel (I used the /boot/config* files as a start for kernel compilation).
What's worth. After I tried those smp kernels without success, even the
purged and newly installed kernel image 2.4.18 smp won't work. dmesg says:
entering smp, cpu 1 stuck !!!
What's going wrong? After a new setup from ground the smp kernel image was
working and after trying to compile and use a custom kernel, even the
kernel image is broken? And I set back the P-RAM more then 10 times.
What's wrong?
In the end I might ask some of the gurus: Does it make sense to allow to
change from kernel 2.2 to kernel 2.4 when the hardware isn't recognized the
same way? Wouldn't it be a _very_ good idea to do a woody/kernel-2.2 and a
woody/kernel-2.4 distribution?
But don't get me wrong. I have the greatest respect and I'm completly
surprised in an absolutly positiv way of the debian/GNU program and the
personal time everyone spend for that.
Your's
Ralf
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: