Re: SMP Kernel

[<benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

>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?

Did you try giving an explicit vmode argument to the kernel ? It's
possible that the kernel fails to probe the monitor type.
>
>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!!!

Well, device initialisation order is... random. Sorry, there isn't
much to do about this, except maybe having both as modules and only
loading the one you need.

>"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?

That should work, you should try harder I beleive to find what's going on.
I noticed that sometimes, the MACE is fucked up after boot and won't
receive/send anything useful. I seems that can also be triggered by some
DHCP clients, though I haven't yet found what's wrong.
>
>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).

Well, I can confirm that my current rsync compiles and works SMP as
I'm running it on a dual 8500 at home ;) For your display problem,
I have a multisync monitor, so it works, I suspect the monitor sensing
isn't done properly so we don't sync to some resolution compatible with
your 16" display. Try passing video=controlfb:vmode:13

>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 !!!

How do you boot ? quik (OF) or BootX ? If you boot with BootX and your
MacOS is more recent than 8.1, you will have problems getting the second
CPU to start as it will have been hijacked by MacOS.

>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?

HW is recognized, at least for my 8500, woody worked out of the box. There
may be some rough edges, all we have to do is fix them.

>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
>
>
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