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Monday 28 April 2008

memconf And AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor

The last update to the excellent memconf utility (V2.5 22-Feb-2008) support properly recent Solaris Express releases, and my recent change from the stock AMD Opteron Processor 148 to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+. (I mostly did that change just to be able to access two run queues separately, not to gain more power per se.)

So, here is the new and appropriate memconf report:

# memconf -d
memconf:  V2.5 22-Feb-2008 http://www.4schmidts.com/unix.html
hostname: unic
manufacturer: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
model:    Sun Ultra 20 Workstation (AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core \
 Processor 3800+ Socket 939 2010MHz)
Sun Family Part Number: A63
Solaris Express Community Edition snv_87 X86, 64-bit kernel, SunOS 5.11
1 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ Socket 939 2010MHz cpu
diagbanner = Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
cpubanner = AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ Socket 939 2010MHz
model = Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
machine = i86pc
platform = i86pc
perl version: 5.008004
CPU Units:
==== Processor Sockets ====================================
Version                          Location Tag
-------------------------------- --------------------------
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ Socket 939
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ Socket 939
Memory Units:
Type    Status Set Device Locator      Bank Locator
------- ------ --- ------------------- --------------------
unknown in use 0   A0                  Bank0/1
unknown in use 0   A1                  Bank2/3
unknown in use 0   A2                  Bank4/5
unknown in use 0   A3                  Bank6/7
total memory = 2048MB (2GB)

You can check and compare with the previous report on my blog.

Wednesday 22 August 2007

SunSpectrum Enterprise Service Plan Supports Solaris 10 Across Non-Sun x64/x86 Servers

You are a big corporate Sun customer? You are particularly interested in running the Solaris operating system on various and heterogeneous x64/x86 platforms including non-Sun servers (more and more hardware providers are certifying their servers to run the Solaris 10 OS these days)?

You are already aware that H-P can be a SPOC (Single Point Of Contact) for both their hardware and the support for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system, and will enjoy the very same mechanism for the Solaris platform?

Well. It is now possible... and a little more in fact: this quiet the opposite. I mean, you can ask Sun to be the SPOC for running Solaris on Sun and non-Sun systems. I feel strongly having Sun to be the very first entry point is a must, in particular since they know really well (today) what can be done on Solaris on x64/x86 platforms, seeing the rise of work which is currently achieve through the OpenSolaris project. Not only Solaris (and its open source counterparts distributions) is becoming more and more relevant in the x64/x86 AMD/Intel world, but they are leading innovations on these platforms.

So, enjoy the not-so-recent announcement about the new SunSpectrum Enterprise Service Plan for enterprise customers.

Thursday 22 March 2007

Patching an x86 Miniroot Image for the Solaris OS

Generally speaking, BigAdmin is a great and valuable source for Sun's systems administrators. Here is an awesome article describing how to patch (update) the kernel used during an installation or system upgrade process, known as miniroot, for x86 based Solaris platform.

At work, we precisely encounter a bug between Solaris 6/06 and the provided nVidia driver which prevents jumpstarting it on a Sun Fire X4100 M2 Server. The support team said we can apply specific patches, already present in Solaris 11/06 at that time. Because we don't really known the exact procedure to follow to update the miniroot accordingly, and because these machines must be provisioned very quickly, we doesn't investigate much on that way (ending installing them with DVD-ROMs, in servers room). Now, after reading the proposed article, we will certainly take the time to do so... if we know how to get the proper bundle of patches to correct our bug.

Monday 4 December 2006

memconf Update!

AS you may notice, there is a new version of the memconf utility. I am proud that the improved x86 support was done using my Sun Ultra 20 as the reference Opteron (amd64) system ;-)

Here are the outputs before, and after Tom Schmidt's great work (look at the bold informations):

$ memconf -d
memconf:  V2.0 17-Oct-2006 http://www.4schmidts.com/unix.html
hostname: unic.thilelli.net
model:    Sun Ultra 20 Workstation (Solaris x86 machine)
Solaris Nevada snv_51 X86, 32-bit kernel, SunOS 5.11
2 x86 2211MHz cpus
diagbanner = Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
model = Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
modelmore = (Solaris x86 machine)
machine = i86pc
platform = i86pc
perl version: 5.008004
CPU Units:
==== Processor Sockets ====================================
Version                          Location Tag
-------------------------------- --------------------------
AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 148    Socket 939
Memory Units:
Type    Status Set Device Locator      Bank Locator
------- ------ --- ------------------- --------------------
unknown in use 0   A0                  Bank0/1
unknown in use 0   A1                  Bank2/3
unknown in use 0   A2                  Bank4/5
unknown in use 0   A3                  Bank6/7
total memory = 2047MB (1.9990234375GB)
$
$ memconf -d
memconf:  V2.1 29-Nov-2006 http://www.4schmidts.com/unix.html
hostname: unic
model:    Sun Ultra 20 Workstation (Solaris x86 machine)
Solaris Nevada snv_52 X86, 64-bit kernel, SunOS 5.11
1 AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 148 2211MHz cpu
diagbanner = Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
model = Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
modelmore = (Solaris x86 machine)
machine = i86pc
platform = i86pc
perl version: 5.008004
CPU Units:
==== Processor Sockets ====================================
Version                          Location Tag
-------------------------------- --------------------------
AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 148    Socket 939
Memory Units:
Type    Status Set Device Locator      Bank Locator
------- ------ --- ------------------- --------------------
unknown in use 0   A0                  Bank0/1
unknown in use 0   A1                  Bank2/3
unknown in use 0   A2                  Bank4/5
unknown in use 0   A3                  Bank6/7
total memory = 2048MB (2GB)

Friday 3 November 2006

memconf Now Support x86 Systems

After months of waiting, the well known memconf utility now support x86 systems. Try it yourself!

Here is the output on my personal Sun Ultra 20 workstation (an AMD Opteron machine) running build 51 of OpenSolaris:

# memconf
hostname: unic.thilelli.net
Sun Ultra 20 Workstation (Solaris x86 machine)
Type    Status Set Device Locator      Bank Locator
------- ------ --- ------------------- --------------------
unknown in use 0   A0                  Bank0/1
unknown in use 0   A1                  Bank2/3
unknown in use 0   A2                  Bank4/5
unknown in use 0   A3                  Bank6/7
total memory = 2047MB (1.9990234375GB)