[H-GEN] Linux and SMP

[Craig ARMOUR]

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> Can anyone running multiple processors give me some feedback as to how
> SMP is working on late versions of Linux. Is it stable? Does it require
> more work? Are there any tricky things I should know?

what do you call a "late" version.  I know the arts faculty are running a
dual processor machine with 2.2.17

Linux lingua.arts.uq.edu.au 2.2.17 #2 SMP Thu Sep 7 16:37:08 EST 2000 i686
unknown

it previously had something like 200+ days uptime till the power outage.
it's current uptime is: 

lingua% uptime
  8:28am  up 80 days, 16:17,  6 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

is that stable enough?  :)

if you want more then 2 processors, we have had linux running on 24
processors 2.2.4-test9 or some such.  It didn't crash while we were
running it at least! :) 

> I imagine it is still not enabled by default in standard kernels and it
> would be necessary to recompile a kernel with SMP enabled. Is this so?

Smp is a compile time option.  when you do a make menuconfig ( or whatever
your favourite config make option is ) there is simple switch to compile
in smp support or not.  note if you have smp support in, it will still run
on single cpu machines, it will just only detect one cpu! ( derr! :) 

HTH

Cheers
Craig ( only a few more weeks till I'm outta here ) Armour 


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