Bug 2437

Summary:	SMP incorrectly detected on non-SMP board; kernel panic; docs slightly wrong
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	dripton
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Cristian Gafton <gafton>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
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Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description dripton 1999-04-30 14:01:14 UTC

I have a Tyan Tomcat I board, which is a single-processor
Pentium board but a close cousin of the dual Tomcat II.
Apparently too close.

At boot, the kernel says :
total of 2 processors activated (66.36 BogoMIPS)
enabling symetric IO mode done
enabling IO-APIC IRQs
IO-APIC pm 0,20,21,22,23,...,255 not connected
MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
trying to set up timer as ExtINT (found pm 0) failed
trying to set up timer as BP IRQ failed
Kernel panic IO-APIC + timer doesn't work
In swapper task not syncing
<hard lock>

The Red Hat manual points out that on an SMP machine, two
kernels are built.  It says the LILO labels are smp and
linux, but they were actually called linux and linux-u.
(Might want to consider syncing the labels and the manual.)
Anyway, linux-u works fine.  If false SMP detection is a
common problem, it might be a good idea to run the
single-processor kernel by default and make those who want
smp choose smp.

Comment 1 Jay Turner 1999-06-04 15:12:59 UTC

This issue has been forwarded to a developer for further action.  In
addition the manual correction has been forwarded to the docs staff.