Newbie--new install on Core 2 Duo?

[Daniel Rudy]

At about the time of 2/13/2007 12:07 PM, pete wright stated the following:
> On 2/13/07, Gerard <gerard at seibercom.net> wrote:
>> On Tuesday February 13, 2007 at 01:42:23 (PM) pete wright wrote:
>>
>>
>>> how would you define "correct"?  have all systems boot with a SMP
>>> kernel by default so that machines with multiple processors
>>> automatically detect all available CPU's?  then what about all the
>>> users that are using uni-proc systems?
>>>
>>> i think the current state of building a system w/o SMP enabled is
>>> great.  it's not that hard to do a:
>>>
>>> cd /usr/src
>>> make buildkernel KERNCONF=SMP
>>> make installkernel KERNCONF=SMP
>>> reboot
>>>
>>> this is all covered in the FreeBSD handbook, which all new
>>> admin's/users should be reading and following closely anyway ;)
>> It is also a hugh waste of time. Doing the initial system installation,
>> there should be an option at the very least to enable SMP. Installing
>> a system, then having to rebuilt and and reinstall it again if counter
>> productive.
>>
>> The market is moving toward multiple CPUs. The FBSD installation routine
>> should embrace that reality and afford it the proper consideration that
>> it deserves.
>>
> 
> hmm...didn't realize that not loading a SMP kernel by default would
> turn people away from running FreeBSD.  building a kernel is much
> different from reinstalling a system though...
> 
> OT, but - I know a fair amount of locations will have a custom kernel,
> and most large sites will script sysinstall to load a custom kernel as
> well.  yet, for "junior" admins maybe a boot time option allow one to
> load a SMP kernel during the install phase (which would also be the
> kernel the system boot's from after installation) may be helpfull.
> There are currently options to disable ACPI (granted that's a .ko) but
> perhaps there is precedent to do this.
> 
> 
> anyway, sounds like a good PR :)
> 
> -pete
> 
> 
> 

Interesting.

I have a computer here that's a AMD 64 3700 and it's not dual core, but
the board is capable of using a X2 processor, so loads a SMP kernel
anyways.  It seems to work just fine with the single core, single CPU.
The thing is though is that it refers to the CPU as cpu0.  Doing it this
way just might be the future...

Oh, and I didn't tell it to use the SMP kernel.  Sysinstall did that
itself.  So based on this behavior, if the bios reports SMP capable (the
bios shows CPU 0 during the post), then sysinstall loads a SMP kernel?

I have to turn acpi off though otherwise I get dead lock up problems.



-- 
Daniel Rudy