FreeBSD 8.0, Intel Xeon E5530, Dell R410, only 2 cores available

[Hoang V.D. | Creative Solutions GmbH]

Thank you.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
> hardware at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Ivan Voras
> Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 3:41 PM
> To: freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 8.0, Intel Xeon E5530, Dell R410, only 2 cores available
> 
> Your CPU count is wrong. The topology might be wrong for Nehalems but it
> would be wrong in a different way.
> 
> Before you can debug the FreeBSD side you should first make the hw.ncpu
> setting equal the "right" total number of logical CPUs available, e.g.
> by configuring your BIOS, upgrading your BIOS, etc.
> 
> After you configure your BIOS to recognize all the CPUs, you can proceed, if
> necessary, to debug the CPU topology.

Unfortunately we are ourselves over 900km away from the server. It was shipped
to the datacenter and we had no sight of it. We have asked the guys at the 
hosting company to look at the BIOS last week to see if HT is disabled and they
said there is no such option, only the option to turn on/off VT.

Their Technical Guidebook for the R410 doesn't say much, neither

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/PowerEdge_R410_Technical_Guidebook.pdf

Just a mention about "Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) support" as a feature
of the BIOS. We also find this doc about how they enumerate the cores and threads

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/shared/dual_core_dell_os.pdf

but that was pretty old and only applies to dual-core.

We will ask the guys at the datacenter to carefully check the BIOS again. Like
I wrote, we didn't touch the settings preset by Dell.

Thank you for your help.

Best regards,
Hoang