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

[Ivan Voras]

On 02/01/10 17:37, Hoang V.D. | Creative Solutions GmbH wrote:
> 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.

While they are checking, tell them to try and upgrade the BIOS.