Connection to server lost when server busy

[Dekard]

I've been doing some configuration and testing on my Sage linux box and I've noticed something that interfering with my ability to use the clients. When comskip is checking a program or when I emerge'd kde I lost connect for the entire time the system was busy. As soon as the process terminated I was able to access the box again, though after a marathon session when comskip was working on 250g of programs I had to reboot the server to reconnect.

The system specs are: Hp Kayak workstation, dual pentium 533's, 256 megs rdram pc-800 ecc, 320g 7,200 rpm hd, nvidia mx440 and a nic. This is on the lower end for sure, but I'm a bit suprised that it is completely unable to handle even one client. Using 'top' I show cpu at 70-90% (i'm unsure if this is one cpu or both) and about 40 megs of free ram. Seems like it would be enough.

Anyway, what do you all think about this?

[Dekard]

Well, here's a bit of interesting info. The second processor isn't being used by the linux kernel. I was able to boot of the Gentoo livecd 2006.0 and verify that the hardware works and the livecd was able to access the second kernel. So, now I'm recompiling the kernel in an attempt to get all this working.

I must say I've learned so much about Linux in the last 2 weeks.

[Dekard]

well, here's some interesting conclusion to this thread. Moving the server from dual 533's to dual 750's solved this. Apparently the small performance boost was enough to enabling this type of multitasking.

Interestingly enough, when I used the Sage 4.1.6 iso to reinstall (I wanted a clean install) again the second processor is not detected or used by the system. So, the kernel used on this cd does not have the support for proper multiprocessor systems. You can boot and run them fine, but one of your processors will go unused. This will affect all systems supporting smp or smt, as in multicore athlon or opteron systems, dual or quad processor athlon or opteron systems, hyperthreading enabled pentium 4 processors, and dual or quad pentium or xeon systems. As multicore processors become more and more mainstream this will likely be addressed by the Sage development team (I suppose) I'll post another thread with more information on this.

Note, the above bug only affects the linux version as installed by the Sage tv 4.1.6 iso. Windows versions will not have this bug as the motherboard and processors are handled by windows and not the Sage supplied linux kernel.