P4 hyperthreading and hddinstall

[Paul_E]

Hi All:

I thought it might me useful to share my experiences with
the latest version of Knoppix (2003-07-26). It took some
time and searching of the Knoppix forum to get it working
perfectly.

Through the magnanimity of my employer, I have a Gateway 700X
with a
3.06 GHz Pentium 4 with hyper-threading,
a serial ATA hard disk (160 GB--what do you do with so much space?)
CD-R/W, CD-ROM, and a ZIP 750 MB drive,
Soundblaster Audigy
NIC card (integrated)
USB optical wheelmouse
flat panel display (Gateway FPD 1730)
I believe the chipset is Intel 875P.

After a bunch of tries, etc., to get the Knoppix CD to
work perfectly, at the boot prompt

knoppix idebus=66 dma wheelmouse alsa

is needed, and all the hardware gets detected, except,
possibly, the modem (I don't care about this, since I
am on a broadband connection). The P4 gets detected as
two processors (the screen displays two Tuxen !), sound
works, I can play CD-s, can connect to the internet. A
funny thing: the zip drive gets ``detected'' twice: first
as ``hda'', with lots of error messages about not being
able to read the partition table, etc., but also as a
regular zip drive. However, there is a slight mixup in the
/etc/fstab file, where the zip drive is associated with
/dev/sda. After changing this to /dev/sda4 it works. The
hard disk is detected as ``hde''.

At this point I had to install the system on the hard disk,
and of course, I wanted to use knoppix-installer. (This is
where the ``dma'' boot option is needed: with it, it takes
about 15 mins, without it more than an hour.) (Another funny
thing: why do people call it ``knoppix-install''?) So,
knoppix-installer works, except that when selecting to
install the boot loader to the MBR, it attempts to write
this to ``hda''. It should be ``hde''. After fixing the MBR
via the Knoppix CD, it boots up nicely. Sound was not
working, but following the advice in a KNOPPIX forum post,
running /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig does the trick.
UNFORTUNATELY, after this the computer fails to reboot. It
hangs at the point where the screen is about to report

cleaning /tmp /var/lock /var/run

The same thing happens with knx-hdinstall.
What appears to be happening is that the two processors
(due to the hyper-threading) are each loading part of the
system, but not in a safe way. The way around this is to
turn off hyper-threading in the BIOS (discovered after 3
days of frustration) So, there is some work to be done by
the developers of the hard disk install program. On the
KNOPPIX CD, apparently it is done correctly, either by
design or by luck.

Anyway, as I said, it now works and of course, it is FAST:
in octave, multiplying two 1000x1000 matrices takes a
whopping 1.05 seconds. (On a 700MHz P3 system, it takes
3.95 seconds)

Have fun!

Paul_E

PS: Oh yes, MY favorite program that is not on the CD but
used to be is Ktuberling--my 3 year old grandson thinks it
is hilarious!)

[aay]

Hi All:

I thought it might me useful to share my experiences with
the latest version of Knoppix (2003-07-26). It took some
time and searching of the Knoppix forum to get it working
perfectly.

Through the magnanimity of my employer, I have a Gateway 700X
with a
3.06 GHz Pentium 4 with hyper-threading,
a serial ATA hard disk (160 GB--what do you do with so much space?)
CD-R/W, CD-ROM, and a ZIP 750 MB drive,
Soundblaster Audigy
NIC card (integrated)
USB optical wheelmouse
flat panel display (Gateway FPD 1730)
I believe the chipset is Intel 875P.

After a bunch of tries, etc., to get the Knoppix CD to
work perfectly, at the boot prompt

knoppix idebus=66 dma wheelmouse alsa

is needed, and all the hardware gets detected, except,
possibly, the modem (I don't care about this, since I
am on a broadband connection). The P4 gets detected as
two processors (the screen displays two Tuxen !), sound
works, I can play CD-s, can connect to the internet. A
funny thing: the zip drive gets ``detected'' twice: first
as ``hda'', with lots of error messages about not being
able to read the partition table, etc., but also as a
regular zip drive. However, there is a slight mixup in the
/etc/fstab file, where the zip drive is associated with
/dev/sda. After changing this to /dev/sda4 it works. The
hard disk is detected as ``hde''.

At this point I had to install the system on the hard disk,
and of course, I wanted to use knoppix-installer. (This is
where the ``dma'' boot option is needed: with it, it takes
about 15 mins, without it more than an hour.) (Another funny
thing: why do people call it ``knoppix-install''?)

I've wondered about this too. I think that it is because the previous installer ended in "install" and not "installer" and so people are just carrying it over. The new installer is knoppix-installer folks

So,
knoppix-installer works, except that when selecting to
install the boot loader to the MBR, it attempts to write
this to ``hda''. It should be ``hde''. After fixing the MBR
via the Knoppix CD, it boots up nicely. Sound was not
working, but following the advice in a KNOPPIX forum post,
running /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig does the trick.
UNFORTUNATELY, after this the computer fails to reboot. It
hangs at the point where the screen is about to report

cleaning /tmp /var/lock /var/run

The same thing happens with knx-hdinstall.
What appears to be happening is that the two processors
(due to the hyper-threading) are each loading part of the
system, but not in a safe way. The way around this is to
turn off hyper-threading in the BIOS (discovered after 3
days of frustration) So, there is some work to be done by
the developers of the hard disk install program. On the
KNOPPIX CD, apparently it is done correctly, either by
design or by luck.

Anyway, as I said, it now works and of course, it is FAST:
in octave, multiplying two 1000x1000 matrices takes a
whopping 1.05 seconds. (On a 700MHz P3 system, it takes
3.95 seconds)

Have fun!

Paul_E

PS: Oh yes, MY favorite program that is not on the CD but
used to be is Ktuberling--my 3 year old grandson thinks it
is hilarious!)

Paul thanks for posting your experience. This is the kind of stuff that is really helpful to people. I think it would be profitable to send this info to the developers. Knoppix.net is really more of a user site than one run by the developers of Knoppix. You can get info on the knoppix developer mailing list here: http://mailman.linuxtag.org/mailman/...debian-knoppix

Again thanks for your work and it looks like you have a really nice system. Wish I had hyperthreading...or two processors anyway.

Adam

[Kluk-Kluk]

I've read the first post, and was very happy to see tht HT could be recognized , and tried it right away. But whatever i did.... My 3,06 Ghz was NOT recognized as a HT CPU.

wtf went wrong, since i've downloaded the latest knoppix ISO and tried it to install the way that was explained. Don't get me wrong all other features work fine... But NOT the HT feature.

Doe anyone else have this problem?

Greetz,