Re: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:05:40AM -0600, Rahul Nabar wrote:
Has anyone seen this problem before? I have dual socket Nehalems with
twin quad core chips. When I booted the OS it showed only 4 cores. I
went to the BIOS and found under Processor Settings the entry
Cores-per-processor set to Dual
This is not intentional.
There are several ways to resolve this.
A) Go into BIOS SETUP and change Processor Settings, Cores per
processor from Dual to All and reboot.
B) Use Dell Deployment Toolkit. The SYSCFG command can reset this
value. From the documentation:
SYSCFG --cpucore 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, all
This option controls the number of enabled cores in each processor.
The default value is set to the maximum number of cores per processor.
Example:
A:syscfg --cpucore=1
Documentation at
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/dtk/3_2/cli/pdf/DTKCLIMR.pdf
Deployment Toolkit can be downloaded from support.dell.com. DTK runs
under several environments, including WinPE and Linux.
C) Use Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA). The omconfig
command can reset this value. From the documentation:
omconfig mainsystem biossetup attribute=cpucore setting=1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
10 | 12 |all
1: Enables one core per processor.
2: Enables two cores per processor.
4: Enables four cores per processor.
6: Enables six cores per processor.
8: Enables eight cores per processor.
10: Enables ten cores per processor.
12: Enables twelve cores per processor.
all: Enables the maximum cores per processor.
Documentation at
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/svradmin/6.2/en/CLI/PDF/CLIUG.pdf
Example:
$ sudo omconfig mainsystem biossetup attribute=cpucore setting=all
OMSA can be downloaded from support.dell.com or from the hardware
repository on http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/ . OMSA runs under
several environments, including fully Dell Supported operating
systems.
D) Under Linux, use smbios-token-ctl to change the value.
smbios-token-ctl is available in the smbios-utils-python package from
your from your favorite Linux distribution, or from EPEL if using
RHEL{4,5}. Install using 'sudo yum install smbios-utils-python' or
equivalent for your distribution.
Example:
$ sudo yum install smbios-utils-python
$ sudo /usr/sbin/smbios-token-ctl --activate -i 0x026e
When using any of the above methods, after a reboot, you'll see all
your cores.
Why is such an entry present in the first place?
For specific application performance reasons, and on occasion for
specific software licensing reasons, it may be desirable to disable
cores at the BIOS level rather than the OS level.
Thanks,
Matt
--
Matt Domsch
Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com www.dell.com/linux
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Re: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 3:23 AM, Tim Small t...@buttersideup.com wrote: You can use dumpCmos from the smbios utilities to dump all of the BIOS settings from the Linux commandline. Do a diff of the two sets of dumps with the dual-core/quad-core setting having been manually changed... You can then use activateCmosToken to change the same setting on all your servers - which should be trivial to automate. Thanks Tim! What's the exact command again? I see the following on my system,: smbios-get-ut-data smbios-rbu-bios-update smbios-sys-info-lite smbios-wakeup-ctl smbios-lcd-brightness smbios-state-byte-ctl smbios-token-ctl smbios-wireless-ctl smbios-passwd smbios-sys-info smbios-upflag-ctl Am I missing a Dell repo that needs to be installed! I dried dmidecode but cannot figure out the exact setting line I need. I'd also push for financial compensation, I think! I wish! :) Is there Dell management lurking on the list? -- Rahul ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
RE: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8
Thanks guys for helping out! I got the official answer from Dell just a few minutes ago. Apparently the Dell servers are doing this strange BIOS setting by design. I quote my Technical Account Manager below. ## [snip] My apologies we were quite busy today, and I was just about to email you with the results. I have been able to check our tools, and with several technicians. The bios setting by default is set to dual. This is the same for the R710, R410, and R510 servers. As of right now it looks like the only way to change that is by either physically going to each server, and booting into the bios and changing the processor settings. [snip] ### R410's R710 and R510 all are doing this currently (says my TAM). I can't say why but I was told it's a feature not a bug. Very non-intuitive to me. I can't see why an 8 core server defaulting to 4 core makes sense. We got two R410 exhibiting the same feature here. It's probably a feature for some alternative OS's that require licensing on a per-core basis. For higher performance, is it better to have two quad-core acting as dual-core processors due to bios setting, or one quad-core ? Cheers, -- Robert ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8
Hi Robert, On Mon, Feb 01, 2010 at 06:02:10PM +0100, Robert von Bismarck wrote: [...] R410's R710 and R510 all are doing this currently (says my TAM). I can't say why but I was told it's a feature not a bug. Very non-intuitive to me. I can't see why an 8 core server defaulting to 4 core makes sense. We got two R410 exhibiting the same feature here. It's probably a feature for some alternative OS's that require licensing on a per-core basis. For higher performance, is it better to have two quad-core acting as dual-core processors due to bios setting, or one quad-core ? I suppose, the only valid answer is: Do your own benchmarks. It depends on such a lot of factors (data locality, hardware architecture details, cache coherency, bus contention etc. pp) that you simply cannot predict how your particular application will perform. HTH, Tino. -- What we nourish flourishes. - Was wir nähren erblüht. www.lichtkreis-chemnitz.de www.tisc.de ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8
Jason Edgecombe wrote: Stephan van Hienen wrote: Subject: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8 Has anyone seen this problem before. We had the same issue with 3 R510's received last week. Some R710's received a couple of months ago had the correct bios setting. I have seen one or two Dell systems where hyperthreading was turned off in the BIOS in the factory. Jason I forgot to mention that these were Optiplex's or Precisions. ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Big Wave Dave bigwaved...@gmail.com wrote: -- Rahul We had 16 x R410s show up in mid December with the same issue. Dave Thanks Dave! I'm feeling a little better that I'm not the only one. -- Rahul ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: R410's shipped out with BIOS showing 4 cores instead of 8
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Big Wave Dave bigwaved...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Rahul Nabar rpna...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone seen this problem before? I have dual socket Nehalems with twin quad core chips. When I booted the OS it showed only 4 cores. I went to the BIOS and found under Processor Settings the entry Cores-per-processor set to Dual If I change it to All everything is ok again. Thanks guys for helping out! I got the official answer from Dell just a few minutes ago. Apparently the Dell servers are doing this strange BIOS setting by design. I quote my Technical Account Manager below. ## [snip] My apologies we were quite busy today, and I was just about to email you with the results. I have been able to check our tools, and with several technicians. The bios setting by default is set to dual. This is the same for the R710, R410, and R510 servers. As of right now it looks like the only way to change that is by either physically going to each server, and booting into the bios and changing the processor settings. [snip] ### R410's R710 and R510 all are doing this currently (says my TAM). I can't say why but I was told it's a feature not a bug. Very non-intuitive to me. I can't see why an 8 core server defaulting to 4 core makes sense. -- Rahul ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
