Re: Software updates

[Aaron Turner <aturner@linuxkb.org>]

On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Wade Hampton wrote:

> Aaron Turner wrote:
> > 
> > VA has finally released (actually a few weeks ago) a more recent kernel
> > which has a lot of performance improvements for SMP/Apache boxes.
> I'll have to get a copy.  I had a LOT of problems with SMP recently,
> but they seem to be fixed in the 2.2.13 pre series (I baselined
> about a dozen systems a week or so before 2.2.13 was officially
> released).

Interesting... Well I've got about $250K worth of VA hardware, so I'll
just give their tech support line a call.  H.J. Hu should be able to tell
me wuz up.  (The only problem is understanding him on the phone though!
:-)

> > Anyways, on the same note, anyone have an opinion on Vodka (single
> > PII-450)?  Anyone know if MySQL will take advantage of a 2.2.x based
> > kernel on a single CPU system?  
> No idea...
> 
> >VA included the lastest RAID patches with
> > 2.2.12 (yes I know 2.2.13 is out, but I haven't seen a reason to try to
> > use the VA patches on a 2.2.13 kernel).
> My experience is that 2.2.12 is OK for UP boxes (it still has a memory
> leak, I believe), but 2.2.12 is NOT stable for SMP.  2.2.12 also
> has some nasty NFS lockups.  During extensive testing somewhere
> around 2.2.13pre8, SMP became stable for me (I have 2 dual PII 300 boxes
> and
> 2 dual PIII/450 boxes -- all were crashing until pre8 or so and now
> all are still running pre15 with ikd and kdb patches).

I know VA has a replacement for the NFS server to fix the bug on the ftp
server which they recommend people use with their modified kernel.g  I
don't know about the mem leak.  Hey do you know what causes the mem-leak?
I've got 3 dual PIII's running the 2.2.12-6 VA kernel here at work which
aren't in production yet.  I can run some live tests.

> > Anyways, I'll be planning the kernel upgrade on Yukon and possibly Vodka.
> > I'll give plenty of warning via email before I switch over- probably next
> > weekend.  If anyone has any special needs/thoughts/concerns, now is the
> > time to voice them.
> Go for it....

Thanks for the info...

--
Aaron Turner, Core Developer       http://vodka.linuxkb.org/~aturner/
Linux Knowledge Base Organization  http://linuxkb.org/
Because world domination requires quality open documentation.