I just bought and built a Dual Xeon server.

Here are the specs:

Dual 2.8GHz Xeon
Tyan Mobo
2048MB ECC Register Ram
2x 80GB HDD

I plan to use this server as a webserver using cpanel from http://cpanel.net.

Obviously this is a 64bit machine and i require x86_64 OS. Cpanel only support the following:

FreeBSD :5.2.1, 5.3, 5.4
cAos :2
CentOS :3.4, 3.5, 4.0, 4.1
RedHat Enterprise Linux :3, 4

All my other machines run CentOS 3.4 (32 bi single proccessors) and for my Dual Xeon i decided to try and install CentOS 4.1 x86_64. However once i got the server up and running i found only a single proccessor was being used.

I am still kindof a linux newbie. I would appreciate any help in this (please talk to me like you would a dunce).

I am not apposed to switching to RedHat Enterprise Linux 4, i just need to be able to use all 4CPUs.

Thanks in advance.

Sooo. No one has a solution?

The reson only one CPU is being utilized is becuase the kernel was compiled for a single CPU machine ( default ).

You will have to etiher find someone to compile the kernel for you with SMP supported or you will have to graduate from to kernel compiler in a hurrry.

If you are so inclided, here are a couple of links about SMP support and kernel compilation.

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/SMP-HOWTO.html

http://www.freeos.com/articles/2589/

You can find a lot of help in that arena google is your friend.

In a nutshell you will need to recompile that kernel ( or an updated version if you want ) and install that kernel. Then boot using that kernel as a test and if all is well your good to go. If not then you can boot back to your old kernel and recompile fixing whatever is broke.

Sorry there is no "one stop shop" anwer here... unless you can find a pre-compiled kernel that is right for you and install it.

BTW its not that bad... if you read up a little and pay attention to detail you can even mess up and not kill your install :-)

You are better off using 32-bit code instead of 64-bit code because Xeon processors are still 32-bit processors. You may think they are 64-bit but they use extensions that converts 64-bit to 32-bit code. This adds overhead and it may kill the peformance of the server. If you want a 64-bit processor, buy an AMD Opteron. AMD Opterons are better server processors than Xeon.

For 2.6.x kernels, all you need to do to compile it is do `make && make modules_install`, but before that tar /usr/lib/modules or rename the directory. For 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels you have to copy bzImage from ..arch/i386/boot to /boot. Also do not forget to run mkinitrd or else Linux will not boot. Make sure initrd is in the root directory '/'.