system dropped to 1 cpu running from 4 , why ??

[davsen]

Hi,,

I have 3 systems running suse Enterprose 10.2 trial , that was installed back in ~ may-june.

I stopped getting access to patches a month or so ago (which I expected)
but now I find that I am down to only 1 cpu from 4 cpus (these are 4 cpu Opteron - SunFire x4200 and v40z systems ) on the 2 machines that were recently rebooted. My 3rd machine which hasn't been rebooted in 85 days is still at 4 cpus. (TOP (press '1') say sorry only 1 cpu ..vs 4 on 3rd machine)

Does Novel 'hobble' the OS after the trial period if you don't buy a support contract??? I though you just lost support for patches.

Not-running-on-all-4 ~dave




I NOT FIXED THIS PROBLEM....

seems my last set of pathces was incomplete.....

I re-ran the patch tool and found some unistalled patches in the queue includeing a kernal update to 2.6.16.53-08

I now am back at 4 cpus.....


~dave

[bigtomrodney]

Yeah SUSE don't cripple it, but you may not have had the correct SMP kernel installed. Perhaps it was an incorrect patch. I know that kernels later than 2.6.18 (I think) are all SMP so this is an old 'issue' and should not occur with newer kernels. All new kernels automatically detect multiple CPUs on boot.

[davsen]

Yes SMP seems be to the root of the problem.

when I patched the machine and updated the kernal it seemed to sort out the correct kernal to use..

HOWEVER, when I did the 2nd machine it didn't and the 3rd which was running smp flipped over to single when I patched it... auugg..
anyway once I forced it to boot using the -smp kernal all was ok..

the funny thing is in the grub/boot menu DISCRIPTION it shows a kernal with the -default and one with -smp extensions , but when you check what the actual binary it is pointing to , both point to default. Which , for at least 2 of my machines was not a SMP binary..

This is not the first issue I've had with the patches leaving me with the 'wrong' kernal.... previously it left me with a default kernal that had been removed..


Novel needs a little more work with the scripts me things...

~dave