Installing RHEL ES4 on an Intel EM64T machine

[David Tonhofer, m-plify S.A.]

--On Wednesday, June 14, 2006 2:16 PM -0400 Bill Tangren <bjt at aa.usno.navy.mil> wrote:

> I just purchased my first box with a xeon processor. When
> I installed RHEL ES4 on it, the installer put two kernels,
> 2.6.9-5.EL and 2.6.9-5.ELsmp on it. When executing "uname --all"
> I see that it is running the smp kernel.
>
> Does anyone know why both were installed by the installer?
> Is it just in case the smp kernel doesn't work?

Yes. It is sometimes useful to fall back to a
non-SMP kernel if there is trouble with the hardware and
the machine locks up etc. when running SMP.

> Is it because I have hyperthreading turned on in the bios?

Indeed. The SMP kernel comes in handy in that case. Run
"top", press "1" and admire the two-CPU machine.

> Is is safe to remove the kernel not being used?

Sure but why would you want to do that? It might come back to
haunt you later.

Best regards,

-- David Tonhofer