Hi Jeremy, Just on the off chance your problem is similar. I encountered a problem with my dual p133 were NICs stopped working with SMP kernels when I first upgraded from SGI-RH7.1 ( 2.4.3 kernel) to SGI-RH7.2 (2.4.9 kernel) - whereas they worked when I booted up a UP kernel. I even tried 3 or 4 different types of NIC and drivers and none of them worked with smp kernels. Just after it became available in NZ, I tried a clean install of the standard RH7.3 release to a separate partition (to eliminate SGI xfs dependencies) and encountered the same NO GO results with the 2.4.18 smp kernel (2.4.18 up kernel worked).
I eventually diagnosed the problem to an issue when the on board APIC was inuse. My current workaround is to disable use of the APIC using append="noapic" in lilo.conf , which allows my box to run SMP kernels again . There is a BIOS parameter that I noticed later: 'PCI IRQ Activated By' Level .versus. Edge. I might try toggling this next time I take my server down for maintenance to see if I can get the APIC back online with the other variation. I got onto this by comparing boot messages between booting an smp versus up kernel. This lead me to do a 'cat /proc/interrupts' where I noticed that NO interrupts were being generated/seen on for the NICs (ok for other adapters/drivers) and also the use of the APIC for interrupt sharing between CPUs . The only explanation I have as to why earlier kernel versions worked (without requiring the explicit "noapic" option) is that they weren't actually using the APIC for some other reason. So just as a long shot, if your smp kernel is attempting to use an APIC, you could try disabling it to see if it resolves your problem. cheers Hugh Mc Jeremy Bertenshaw wrote: >Hi All, > >anyone managed to get this to work? just installing >an old digital smp box with RH7.3 and it appears the >driver is not happy at all, boots fine with a single >processor kernel. > >jeremyb > > >
