2.1.x and IBM Netfinity

Stepan, Jamison (Jamison.Stepan@state.mn.us)
Mon, 9 Nov 1998 05:54:23 -0600


Hello,

We have linux installed on an IBM Netfinity 5500 and under 2.0.x everything
works well. When I tried upgrading is when we ran into problems. Here's what
I can say:

The machine has some proprietary stuff in it (ServeRAID and a weird Net
card) so we had to provide our own hardware for some things (Adaptec 2940
card and 3Com 3c900 card). The machine also has two processors (2 400 P2s).
Under 2.0.x only one is recognized since IBM uses the v1.4 BIOS (hence one
big reason we want to move to 2.1).

When I compiled and installed the new kernel the machine reboots and sees
both processors (yay!) and starts working normally. After about 17 to 19
minutes though it completely locks and reboots. It's a hard enough reboot
that the machines built in error light comes on which is only supposed to
happen in case of hardware failure. The machine will cycle and through and
continue this process every 17 to 19 minutes. The first thing I tried was
pulling the second processor and making it run on just one. It didn't change
anything.

I get no error messages, nothing logged to the syslogd, I even tried cat'ing
/proc/kmsg and watching through a crash and nothing happened. The only odd
thing I can see is that there are two lights for the processors on the front
of the machine. Only one is ever solid, the other blinks as it is accessed,
except during a crash, at which point both remain solid. Obviously if I have
only one processor in the machine it's always a solid light, so I don't know
if this means anything.

I am not sure what to do to get some debugging info for people so any help
would be appreciated. I will also try and answer any questions I can to try
and figure out what is going on.

Thanks,

Jamison Stepan

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jamison Stepan
Internet Application Developer
Minnesota Department of Children,
     Families and Learning
Jamison.Stepan@state.mn.us
jstepan@scc.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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