Disable CPU cores in RHEL3
 

I have two quad core Intel cpus. I would like to be able to disable some cores for testing. How can I do this? Grub.conf? RHEL3 config file?

If I can disable the number of cores, can I also disable certain cores on certain physical processors?

All options for doing this would be greatly appreciated.

I was able to use maxcores= in the grub.conf, but how can I disable and enable while running an app? There is some sort of cpu hotplug, but I'm running 2.4 which cpu hotplug doesn't support. Also, i don't think i can enable this in the kernel since I installed the rpm for the kernel I am running.