I've been having trouble with the task scheduler in the kernel. I'm running BOINC from a manual installation (because portage builds a useless version, but that's another story) and as I have two CPUs I've told it to use them both. This used to work well on my previous motherboard, now defunct, but it doesn't on this Supermicro H8DCE.
I'm running gkrellm to show me what's happening in the system, including processor loads. Nice time is shown separately from user and system time, so I can easily see what BOINC's up to. This is what happens: when BOINC starts up it starts two processes, which it thinks are going to occupy up to 100% of each processor's time. But both gkrellm and top show both processes running at 50% on CPU1, always that one, with CPU0 idling. Then, if I start an emerge or something, that divides its time more-or-less equally between the two processors with the BOINC processes still confined to CPU1. Even more confusingly, sometimes top even disagrees with itself about the processor loadings, the heading lines showing one CPU loaded and the task lines showing the other. Just occasionally, BOINC will start its processes properly, each using 100% of a CPU, but after a while it reverts spontaneously to its usual behaviour. I can't find anything in any log to coincide with the reversion. I've tried all the versions of BOINC I can find, and I've tried all the available kernels, including vanilla-sources, with no change. I've also tried running [EMAIL PROTECTED] instead of BOINC, and that behaves in the same way. I've talked to the BOINC people, who say they haven't seen this behaviour anywhere else and that it sounds like a problem with my particular configuration of components. I'm trying an installation of Kubuntu to see if that's any different, but it's a long process getting to an equivalent state so I can't report a result yet. I'm beginning to think there must be a problem with my motherboard. Can anyone suggest something else for me to check? -- Rgds Peter Humphrey Linux Counter 5290, Aug 93 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
