Bios showing two cpu

[K.C. Chan]

All,
I've compiled my kernel with smp supports, but only one cpu is showing up in top, there's suppose to be according to the BIOS during boot. What gives? Shouldn't the kernel detected that there are 2 cpu on the system? Thanks.

[Stuart Browne]

I don't suppose you'd care to tell us what hardware you're using?

Whilst he BIOS will state that there are two CPU's, it will also state whether a board is capable of having 2 CPU's.. Are you sure you arn't mis-interpreting what the bootup is saying?

[Jeffrey Wong]

When you say that top shows only one processor, I assume you are referring top having a line labeled as CPU states. On some distributions, this line is a summary of what percentage of total cpu time was spent in each state, not a per cpu summary. To see if your system is using multiple processors, try 'cat /proc/stat'. If the kernel is using multiple processors, there should be a line in that file for each one.

[I_M]

Hi

1) confirm you are using SMP kernel.
# dmesg

2) see your kernel recognize how many cpus.
# cat /proc/cpuinfo

If you see 2 cpus in cpuinfo,
find out which version of top you are using.
In your question, you didn't mention about your distribution.
If you are using Red Hat, top is in procps RPM.

# rpm -q procps

procps-2.0.6 show you only one line cpu usage. procps-2.0.7 support individual cpu usage.

Regards,

[K.C. Chan]

All, attached is the output of cat /proc/stat and cat /proc/cpuinfo. From the output, the kernel does not seem to detect all the cpu.

Does it matter if I used i386 instead of i686 for the kernel, I am wondering about this because according to uname I have an i686.

For those who wish to know the type of HardWare and Flavor of Linux; I runing RH7.1 with 2.4.18 kernel (i386) with smp support. The box is a Compact Proliant.

Does any one have any idea why my kernel is only detecting 1 cpu whereas the BIOS tells me that there's 2 cpu? Thanks.

[Fabi]

Is it possible to see the BIOS/POST messages?

Are you enabling CPU ID in the BIOS for both CPU's or only for one of them?

may i see your SMP options for your .config kernel file?

cheers!

[K.C. Chan]

I can't post the Bios Message at the moment since I will have to reboot the box to get it. But here's the .config for the kernel.

[W. Michael King]

Since we don't know the motherboard, here's something to consider.

From the SMP HowTO
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/SMP-HOWTO-3.html

...
A note from Richard Jelinek says also that activating the Enhanced RTC is necessary to get the second CPU working (identified) on some original Intel Mainboards.
...



Here's the steps:
make config # or menuconfig or xconfig
make dep
make clean
make bzImage # or whatever you want
# copy the kernel image manually then RUN LILO
# or make lilo
make modules
make modules_install

Good Luck!