Series 700 or 800 kernel?

[Richard Munn]

I know this is a trange question but...
We have a 10.20 system (J5000) which behaves a bit strangely with some multithreaded programs but otherwise runs fine. Someone made a comment about it history which suggested that it was once a slow series 800 server.

Is there any way to tell if a kernel is a Series 800 kernel (i.e. a K580) or a series 700 kernel. Under 10.20 the OS comes on different CD's but are there any definative kernel differences?

[Hoefnix]

Because of different HW-architecture HP had 700 and 800 install media in the past.
At kernel level i think you have the same tunable parameters.

You are facing same performance problem on the 700 system?
Check your kernel setting with another system (if possible) that run's the same flavor of applications (oracle or web-server etc), but don't think it become a Formula1 system by just changing some tunables.

Regards,

Peter

[Ravi_8]

Hi Richard

J5000 is a 700 series machine, which ofcourse slow comapred to 800 series machines. Kernel differences will be there as 10.20 is 32 bit OS.

[Richard Munn]

The issue is not a case of if it works or not, management suspects that someone copied an S800 kernel onto an S700 platform. That may or may not make any difference but they want to know if it was done. As far as I know there is no way to tell. I can use adb to view current parameters the kernel has but determining an S800 kernel Vs. an S700 kernel I don;t have a clue what to look for if there is anything to look for.

But then again, I don't want to saty it can't be done then someone pipe up that there is a 2 second method to find out.

At the end of the day, the kernel will be rebuilt on the current platform and it will be right but this is a bit of witch-hunt type thing.

[Patrick Wallek]

I don't have a 10.20 series 700 system I can check, but I just did a 'file /stand/vmunix' on my k580 and it came back like:

# file /stand/vmunix
/stand/vmunix: s800 executable -not stripped

I suspect on a 700 series machine that it should be 's700 executable....'.

Try the 'file /stand/vmunix' and see what you get. If it shows 's700' you should be OK.

If someone did copy /stand/vmunix from a K580 though, I SERIOUSLY DOUBT that the J5000 would even boot. The 2 machines are so very different that I don't think it would work.

[Tom Ward_1]

I just checked "file /stand/vmunix" on a B180L workstation (v-class test station) running 10.20. That shows it as s800.

model
9000/778/B180L
uname -a
HP-UX xxxxxxx B.10.20 A 9000/778 2003326859 two-user license
file /stand/vmunix
/stand/vmunix: s800 executable -not stripped

I'm not sure of a good way to check, but "file /stand/vmunix" doesn't seem to work.

Regards,
Tom

[Patrick Wallek]

Hmmm....Bummer!!!

Well, I still think that if a kernel (/stand/vmunix) was copied from a K580 to the J5000 that the J5000 would not even boot. I just don't think there would be any hope of that working.

Now if they happened to copy, for whatever reason, the /stand/system file then that may be a whole different story. I really don't think there would be any way to check that.

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

As Patrick said, there is no way for another architecture's kernel to run at all, whether it was a K460 or a D350 or whatever. At 10.20 and earlier, the there were many, many differences in the kernel related to workstations versus servers, mostly due to I/O. The J5000 has nothing in common with the K460 and will hang or crash when tried on the J5000.

However, all of this is moot. Simply go into SAM, make a change to one of the kernel parameters like nfile to make it a bit bigger and let SAM rebuild the kernel and reboot. You are now guarenteed that the kernel belongs to the J5000.

As far as performance goes, that is a very complex question, especiallty with threaded applications. Don't bother troubleshooying anything until you have the latest (actually, the last) patches from the Dec 2001 SupportPlus CDROM, both HWE and XSW bundles. That will resolve hundreds of issues that could take you months to find.