Because I'm getting a "lost interrupt" message, I'm posting this under "hardware". If that is incorrect, I apologize, but I'm kind of at my wit's end and really need help.

I had been running the SMP kernel in Redhat 7.2 just fine, but since I "upgraded" to RH 9, the SMP kernel repeats the message "hda: lost interrupt" during the boot process and then hangs, repeating that message until I restart the computer.

I have an old HP Vectra XU 5/90 with dual P133's. As you can imagine, not being able to run in SMP mode has seriously impacted this box's performance. If I can't track this down, I'm going to have to go back and reload 7.2, which I'd rather not do.

If anyone needs more info in order to help me track this down, please ask. I'll happily furnish whatever I have to help!

On the assumption that you've got it running without SMP support have you considered building your own kernel? It'll help squeeze those last shreds of performance out of your hardware. On quick boxes that are not heavily loaded you probably wouldn't notice the difference but on older heavily loaded box it can be noticable. Also, hdparm can work wonders too for tuning (once the SMP works!)

If you haven't built a kernel before then you'll want to have a read of the kernel HOWTO which is available from http://www.tldp.org

Welcome to LQ BTW

cheers

Jamie...

Jamie,

(Thanks for the welcome!)

Yes, I have been using single processor kernel and it works fine, though there is a message "spurious 8952a interrupt" in the boot log that I wonder about. Could it be connected to the SMP problems?

Though I've been a programmer for some time and have used kdevelop (as well as Visual C++ and Macintosh Project Builder), I've not gotten ambitious enough to compile my own kernel yet. I've looked through the kernel HOW-TO and it looks like an awful lot to digest!

Not that I wouldn't try that, if that will fix the problem. I am just hoping that someone will know what is causing this error before I just go hacking around in the kernel source code!

Kevin

Building a kernel is a bit scary the first time, but so long as you know what hardware you've got and you're willing to read the info associated with all the available kernel options that you should go too far wrong.

I can't say that I know what would cause the spurious 8952a interrupt message, but I wouldn't necessarily assume it would be SMP specific.

good luck

Jamie...