[H-GEN] Single CPU shows up as dual CPU.

[Ewan Edwards]

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Don't know if this is a problem or not.

I've recently (Friday) installed RedHat7.3[1] on a new server.  This machine 
is destined to become the office CVS server as well as take on the DNS, DHCP 
and NTP server roles.  It is a Dell PE2650 with a single P4 Xeon processor.

After completing the install and booting for the first time, I noticed that it 
has been installed to use the SMP version of the kernel by default.  I know 
this box is dual CPU capable, but I also know it has only one CPU installed.  
(I opened it up to have a look when it first arrived.)  Running top shows a 
CPU0 and a CPU1, which I kind of expected with an SMP kernel, but 
interestingly top also shows % usage on both (see below).  I expected to see 
0% usage for CPU1 at all times.

I suppose my question comes down to this.  What would be the consequences of 
continuing to use the SMP kernel vs using the standard (single CPU) kernel, 
and which one should I be using?  (I haven't yet tried booting it with the 
stadard kernel.)

Any advice will be appreciated.

<snip>
 11:11am  up 17:46,  2 users,  load average: 0.23, 0.06, 0.02
36 processes: 35 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
 11:13am  up 17:49,  2 users,  load average: 1.00, 0.48, 0.18
36 processes: 33 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU0 states:  0.0% user, 12.0% system,  0.0% nice, 87.0% idle
CPU1 states:  0.0% user, 17.0% system,  0.0% nice, 82.0% idle
Mem:  1031008K av, 1018340K used,   12668K free,       0K shrd,  130280K buff
Swap: 1992052K av,       0K used, 1992052K free                  777448K 
cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
 4906 root      15   0   544  544   468 R    17.3  0.0   0:39 cp
 4889 root      15   0     0    0     0 DW    8.1  0.0   0:04 kjournald
 4911 root      15   0   988  988   800 R     1.1  0.0   0:00 top
    1 root      15   0   480  480   420 S     0.0  0.0   0:05 init
    2 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 keventd
    3 root      34  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
    4 root      34  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU1
    5 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:01 kswapd
    6 root      15   0     0    0     0 DW    0.0  0.0   0:00 bdflush
</snip>


[1]  We purchased two (2) with the Linux OS option and two (2) with no OS.



-- 
Ewan Edwards BE MIEAust CPEng MCSE

MineStar Solutions
Ewan.Edwards at cat.com
Telephone: +61 (0) 7 3329 8124
Facsimile: +61 (0) 7 3329 8101
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