SMP kernel on single-cpu machine...?

Rob Fugina (robf@fergcons.com)
Tue, 11 Nov 1997 10:08:19 -0600 (CST)

I have a Tyan Titan Pro motherboard, which is dual Pentium Pro 200MHz,
but only one CPU on the board (so far). I just built the 2.1.62 kernel
on it (I'm sort of keeping up). As distributed, SMP=1 is set in the
Makefile. As the system boots (after device detection, as rc scripts
are running), I get these messages here and there...

CPU #0: previous IPI still not cleared after 10mS

>From the looks of the code & comments surrounding where this message
is printed, this is a relatively bad thing.

This continues after the system is up, but eventually, the whole
machine locks with the exception of these messages being repeated at
the console. Can't even switch virtual consoles, warm reboot, nothing.

I would have guessed that an SMP kernel should be able to run on a single
CPU, only a bit less efficiently, but maybe that's not the case? I haven't
seen any discussion of SMP development here, so it it still going on or
has it stagnated?

Rob

-- 
Rob Fugina, robf@fergcons.com
Unix Systems Administrator/Consultant