upgrading to an SMP kernel

[Mike Pepe]

Gordon Price wrote:
> Kind Folks,
> 
>    I am running into an issue that has me really bugged. I have one 
> machine that has the *2.6.11-1.27FC3smp* kernel and another with the 
> *2.6.11-1.27FC3* non-smp kernel. I need to use the smp version for a 
> project that only works with this version of FC3 that uses a USB 2.0 
> video device I designed.  I have looked everywhere I know to figure out 
> how to get the smp kernel on the non-smp  machine, and I can not seem to 
> back track the steps correctly.
> 
>     I have tried yum every which way but loose, and can not get an smp 
> kernel period, to install or upgrade on the non-smp machine. Yum wants 
> to upgrade me to 2.6.12, and I don't want to do that.
> 
>    On the machine that does not have the smp kernel, I tried copying all 
> the smp files (4) that were in /boot on the smp machine to the /boot 
> directory on the non-smp machine. I then added an entry in 
> /etc/grub.conf for the smp kernel boot. This does not work at all. This 
> issue makes me worry that Linux hard drives may be more difficult to 
> move from machine to machine in a pre-configured format than I had 
> wished????
> 
>    Specifically, how would you try to upgrade the non-smp machine to smp 
> without trashing what is already on it??? Could Linux be looking at the 
> hardware itself and deciding that maybe it can not support the smp 
> version in the first place???
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gordon
> 

Hi Gordon,

I hope I am correct in assuming you understand that the SMP (Symmetric 
Multi-Processing) kernel is for machines that have two or more CPUs? (or 
dual core CPUs)

You can boot the SMP kernel on a uniprocessor box, but it doesn't gain 
you anything over the kernel compiled specifically for the single CPU.

-Mike