Re: FC4 crashes repeatedly on Supermicro AS1020A-T dual-core Opterons, SMP

One note.  I am running on a quad 875 system, but am using Suse rather 
than FC4.  It is running perfectly reliable (this is a 4 cpu, dual-core, 
2.2ghz box, 8 processors total).  I had problems with FC4 myself, 
although it runs perfectly on my normal dual xeon boxes...


Robert M. Hyatt, Ph.D.          Computer and Information Sciences
[email protected]                   University of Alabama at Birmingham
(205) 934-2213                  136A Campbell Hall
(205) 934-5473 FAX              Birmingham, AL 35294-1170

On Fri, 5 May 2006, Bill Davidsen wrote:

> Michal Szymanski wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I have recently purchased three Supermicro AS1020A-T servers equipped
>> with two dual-core Opterons 280 each. H8DAR-T motherboards, 8 or 12 GB
>> RAM. The systems carry FC4 x86_64 with proprietary driver (made by
>> Adaptec) for the onboard Marvell 88SX6041 SATA Controller. Original
>> (install) kernel 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp - unfortunately not upgradable due
>> to the lack of the SATA driver for other kernel versions.
>> 
>> All systems crash (either hang with some "machine check exception"
>> kernel messages or reset) when loaded with repeating runs of 1.3gb, CPU
>> intensive with some I/O. I run 2 or 4 jobs simultaneously and they had
>> never survived more than a few hours.
>> 
>> Suspecting it may be the SATA driver problem I mounted /tmp as "tmpfs"
>> and repeated the tests entirely in /tmp (with plenty of RAM this means
>> (IMHO) doing I/O in memory). No success.
>> 
>> It is somewhat better when I run similar size no-I/O jobs but these also
>> crash, although less frequently.
>> 
>> I tried to install i386 version, also crashes. Same (or even worse) with
>> FC3.
>> 
>> Memtest does not show any RAM errors. 
>> Finally I did two tests which seem to have excluded SATA
>> controller/driver as the reason for crashes:
>> 
>> 1. I installed an additional IDE hard disk and put FC4/x86_64 system on
>> it (without the Adaptec driver, so the system does not even see the SATA
>> disks), updated the kernel to the latest (2.6.16) - also crashed.
>> 
>> 2. I ran non-SMP 2.6.11 kernel (with Adaptec driver) on another machine.
>> There have been two test repeating 1.3g jobs running on it (each getting 
>> 50%
>> of the single CPU used by the system) for over 50 hours now, no crashes.
>> Also, a single test job running on SMP kernel gave no crashes in 24 hours.
>> 
>> It seems there is a problem with SMP kernel and dual-core Opterons, at
>> least on this hardware. I am stuck with three top-level machines which
>> can work only at 25% of nominal cpu power. Any hints would be
>> appreciated.
>>
>> 
> What happens if you use only one CPU? Either with a uni kernel (you should 
> have gotten one) or "maxcpus=1" in the boot commands. You are running a 
> custom kernel with custom drivers, so you really should be asking the 
> supplier, all we can do is suggest things which might provide extra 
> information.
>
> -- 
> bill davidsen <[email protected]>
> CTO TMR Associates, Inc
> Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979
>
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