Greetings!
I've recently come into possession of a Symbolics-branded XP1000
box. It's apparently a 500MHz Alpha with 512MB and a nice fast
SCSI disk. It had some sort of lisp software loaded on top of
Tru64 Unix. Being unfamiliar with the hardware, it was a bit of a
struggle, but the machine now runs RedHat 6.2. At this point, it's
still pretty much in its out-of-the-box condition. In particular,
I haven't upgraded the 2.2.14 kernel.
One of my co-workers with an identical system was testing files
>2Gb and noticed that the system appeared to lock up during large
file copies. I tried "cp /dev/zero /local/junk" on my system and
noticed the same thing.
The window system was responsive for about 20 seconds after starting
the copy and then the mouse stopped moving. Telnetting in from
outside got the "connected" message but no login prompt. Rsh'ing
in from outside got zero response. It took a few minutes to fill
the 3.2Gb partition, and then everything was fine. The second time
I tried this experiment, I nice'd the cp and got the same lockup.
This doesn't seem like correct behavior. Is it taking 20 seconds
to fill the page cache and then freezing out all other processes?
Is there a scheduler problem? We're going to be setting up a
computing cluster using Linux-based dual Alpha nodes. Management
has observed our experiment and is now having second thoughts about
the hardware and OS choice. But worst of all, the local NT admin
is smirking at me. :-(
Suggestions (including "Take it to another list, please!") will be
appreciated. If you reply, please cc: me. I've sent my subscribe
request in, but the list is apparently not automated.
Thanks!
Paul Allen
-- Paul L. Allen | voice: (425) 865-3297 fax: (425) 865-2964 Unix Technical Support | paul.l.allen@boeing.com Boeing Phantom Works Math & Computing Technology Site Operations, POB 3707 M/S 7L-68, Seattle, WA 98124-2207-- To unsubscribe: send e-mail to axp-list-request@redhat.com with 'unsubscribe' as the subject. Do not send it to axp-list@redhat.com
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