[WBEL-users] kernel 2.6.5 on WB 3.0?

[Bill Davidsen]

Seth Bardash wrote:

> Any suggestions on the packages that need to be upgraded or added
> to WB 3.0 to get it to support 2.6.5 would be helpful. 

You need the modutils to load modules. The arjan ones are more 
convenient than doing the install of Rusty'd code yourself, if nothing 
else. Careful, there's a WBEL upgrade which overwrites them again.

For the proc utils, you can use the RH ones or the Albert Callahan 
sourceforge version. I slightly prefer the AC/SF versions, both work and 
differ mainly in user presentation of data.
> 
> We are going to try to start where arjanv/2.6 has left off. Just
> installing 2.6.5 source and doing the make's doesn't come close.
> Way too many unresolved symbols and you need to install the
> filesystem drivers in the kernel to get them to come up properly.

The main thing which seems to be missing in arjan and kernel.org 
versions is a forward port of the CPIE stuff for VPN. That's the only 
thing I don't find which I would really like, since I've used it a bit. 
Yes there are alternatives.
> 
> If there was something that did for error messages what rpm -q
> does packages that would be a big help but its not that easy....
> 
> We have found that systems based on Fedora core 1 upgraded to the
> 2.6.5 kernel run the gigabit ethernet about 25 to 40 % faster than
> the standard 2.4.XX kernel with no other changes. 33-40 MB/sec
> versus 52 - 60 MB/sec - The only changes made were to install the
> source for 2.6.5, compile and run the new kernel (greatly
> sinplified of course). All hardware and BIOS setting were the
> same. The numbers shown above were for nfs transfers of iso images
> to and from our linux server.

Were you using a "standard kerenl" as in kernel.org, or the enhanced one 
in WBEL? That had new threading as well.
> 
> If we could upgrade the WB 3.0 kernel to 2.6.5 with the correct
> additional rpm packages to get it to work correctly we expect to
> see a similar increase in net performance.
> 
> Something to work on in my spare time ;-)

I strongly believe that this is a case of better tuning by default 
rather than some driver thing, but I could be wrong about that.

-- 
    -bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
  last possible moment - but no longer"  -me