APIC blues with SMP kernel

[Wolfgang]

On Fri, 2004-05-21 at 12:18, Andre Costa wrote:
> Hi Wolfgang,
> 
> On Thu, 20 May 2004 17:50:30 +1000
> "Wolfgang Gill" <wolfgang at rpi.net.au> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 19 May 2004 22:28:49 -0300, Andre Costa wrote
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I have a P4 at work, and I have been having bad times trying to make
> > > 
> > > it work with hyper-threading enabled.
> > > 
> > > What happens are occasional lockups -- system appears to hang 
> > > (keyboard, mouse and X freeze, although machine still responds to 
> > > pings; all other services -- ssh, web, postgres -- are also dead).
> > > 
> > > Last time it froze, its last words were:
> > > 
> > > May 19 14:11:19 dali kernel: APIC error on CPU1: 00(40)
> > > 
> > > May 19 14:11:39 dali kernel: hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status ==
> > > 0x24
> > > 
> > > I know about APIC problems, but the fact is that if I pass 'noapic'
> > > to the kernel before boot, the sibling CPU is detected but it
> > > doesn't seem to be activated: it appears on top and gkrellm but it
> > > never does anything (i.e. it remains with 0% usage).
> > > 
> > > I googled around, and this dma_timer_expiry problem seems to be
> > > kernel 2.6.x related. This leads me to think this is specific to
> > > Fedora kernel, since RH back-ported many 2.6 features into its 2.4
> > > kernel...
> > > 
> > > I am compiling a vanilla kernel as we speak, will try it out during
> > > the weekend. However, given the fact that Fedora kernel is supposed
> > > to provide superior performance compared to vanilla kernels, I would
> > > 
> > > like to use it instead, if at all possible...
> > > 
> > > So, my questions are:
> > > 
> > > 1. any success stories out there about SMP + Fedora on P4s?
> > > 2. any black-magic to use besides 'noapic', 'acpi=ht' and 'apm=off'?
> > > 3. do vanilla kernels work with Fedora just fine (w/ or w/o SMP)?
> > > 
> > > BTW: FC2 is not an option in the near future, so please don't 
> > > suggest I upgrade ;)
> > > 
> > > TIA
> > > 
> > > Andre
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Andre Oliveira da Costa
> > <snip>
> > 
> > My first suggestion would be to update your mother board BIOS. There
> > maybe there are some bugs in the APIC code in the BIOS. Or change the
> > APIC level from 1.4 to 1.1.
> 
> Mmmh... ok, I will try that -- I do recall seeing this on BIOS setup.
> 
> > I don't have any APIC problems with my servers, as I run Tyan MPX
> > mother boards, and have not seen APIC problems at all. I've run RH9,
> > FC1 & RHEL3 WS on these boards without any problems.
> 
> It should be something specific to my mobo then. Bad luck =(
> 
> Thks for the ideas,
> 
> Andre
> 
> -- 
> Andre Oliveira da Costa
> 
That may very well be possible, as I had similar problems with MSI Dual
CPU Boards. So I decided to go for Tyan boards, and all the problems
went away.

Wolf