[plug] Compact SMP problems

[Peter Wright]

On Sun, May 28, 2000 at 11:44:41AM +0800, Ian Kent wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> At work we have a project to evaluate the feasibility of using Linux as a
> compute OS for some of our Geophysics processing.
> 
> We are using Redhat 6.2 on a Compac with dual 733 Mhz CPUs, 1 GB RAM and
> the latest SCSI.

Phwoaorrrrr..... *drools*

> I will post the specific config if anyone is interested or it seems
> relavent to the problem.

You could just post the bogomips rating and intimidate us all. :)

> The problem we are having is that when using the SMP kernel the network
> performance slows to a crawl after between 1 and about 5 days (from
> around 9MB/sec to around 10kb/sec). This is seen in simple FTP, without
> even the overhead of NFS.
> 
> I will post a summary of what has been tried so far during next week.
> 
> Since this machine will get all the processing data bia NFS this is a
> 'show stoper'.
> 
> Does anybody have any idea what may be causing this or any sugestions for
> resolving the problem.

I'd suggest that a lot more info (kernel version and complete configuration
details along with networking configuration for a start) would be needed
before anyone could take a stab at the problem. Also (no slight meant to
the denizens of this list), it may be more appropriate to try on a more
general linux developer or bug-report mailing list - perhaps linux-kernel
(although that is very busy) or maybe another more specific to
SMP/networking problems.

I have to say that a problem like this, which pops up after "between 1 and
about 5 days..." etc., sounds like it would be a bastard for any developer
to pin down.

My first suggestion (and pretty much anyone else's as well, no doubt) would
be to try the latest stable kernel (2.2.15) if you're not using it already
and see if you can reproduce the problem.

> --
>    ,-._|\    Ian Kent

I hope someone else might be able to offer you some more specific and
cogent help.


Good luck,

Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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