RH9/RHEL3 ON PROLIANT 5500 with SMP

[Andres Mujica]

Hi, i'm having serious issues with our Proliant 5500 2xP3XEON 550 512MB RAM 3x18.2GB SCSI - ARRAY

we've searched on all internet founding some people with the same problem:

Linux doesn't start with SMP Kernel. We've already modify BIOS setup to several OS with partial success, for example, using Linux/Unixware2/Unixware 7 all we've got is a kernel panic.

With Other/Unix(large Partition Drive) it starts but the 2nd Proc is not detected with the dmesg message:

SMP Motherboard not detected / Local APIC not detected, using dummy APIC emulation.

we've already recompiled kernel
we've used nomca noapic params on the kernel,

we've tried with RH9 and RHEL3 without success.

Sadly we must stick with RH9 'cause an application (essential to the company) oonly works with RH9.

There's something that troubles me with dmesg output:

ACPI: RDSP (v000 COMPAQ ) 0x000f4f70
>>> ERROR: Invalid Checksum
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/ nomca noapic
No local APIC present or hardware disabled
Initializing CPU#0

.. well the problem is with APIC: RDSP ...

with any kernel i've tried it gets the same error.

I couldn't find at the SCU the APIC Full Table Mode. that's the only thing i have not tried 'til now. But i believed that selecting linux as OS at the SCU is the same (correct me if i'm wrong) but anyway it doesn't work as i already explained.

So if anyone out there can help us, we'd be grateful.

[NiCK_76]

Upgrade hardware firmware.
Upgrade linux kernel by offical patch.
Install os by smartstart boot cd.

[Andres Mujica]

Hi, thanks for the tips.

currently i have done the following:

. upgrade firmware. done. The last rev is from 2000.

. upgrade kernel. done. currently using the last stock kernel from rh. There's something to note. I've compiled the kernel and the system started aparently fine, but when i look at dmesg i get this:

Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/
Local APIC disabled by BIOS -- reenabling.
Found and enabled local APIC!
.
.
.
CPU0: Intel Pentium III (Katmai) stepping 03
per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 2924.98 usecs.
task migration cache decay timeout: 10 msecs.
SMP motherboard not detected.
enabled ExtINT on CPU#0
ESR value before enabling vector: 00000000
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
Using local APIC timer interrupts.
calibrating APIC timer ...
..... CPU clock speed is 549.8466 MHz.
..... host bus clock speed is 99.9720 MHz.
cpu: 0, clocks: 999720, slice: 499860
CPU0<999712>
Starting migration thread for cpu 0
smp_num_cpus: 1.
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0080, last bus=9


so it seems to enable smp but only detects 1 cpu.

if i look at /proc/cpuinfo it shows only one cpu

so.

any ideas?

[Simone Rossato]

I had the same problem on my DL360 G3 and we found the solution modifying the BIOS "MPS table" parameter to "Full Mapped Table". Now the operating system sees correctly 4 processors (2 logical and 2 physical)