I'm tinkering with my Digital Prioris 6000 server, and am looking for a version of Linux or even BSD that supports multiple processors.
4xPPro 200 processors, 512MB RAM, 4x4.3GB hard disks, 2x Digital 10/100 NIC cards, built-in S3 video.
What I've tried so far:
Mandrake Linux 10.1 - won't install
Kubuntu 5.04 - installs, only 1 processor appears in system information
Mandrake Linux 9 - installed, can't remember if it saw all of them or not
Fedora Core 2 - corrupt CDs, couldn't get past installing Perl
I plan to try to learn how to set it up for file sharing, PHP/MySQL/Portege SQL/Apache tinkering.
Any suggestions?
Any of the BSDs should work fine on a multi CPU x86 box. I'm not sure if they would have it enabled in the default kernel, but compiling an SMP kernel on a modern BSD is fairly simple. The hard part is knowing what to/not-to edit from the config file.
I used to use mandrake 9.1 on my old dual pentium pro box. It appeared to work fine and it did see both of the cpus (smp was one of the choices on the bootup screen).
I use SuSE Pro 7.2 on my dual PPro 220Mhz... works like a charm.
CM
I've booted Knoppix on my Dual PIII 550 and it's recognized the processors out of the box. With the amount of RAM you have, you'd be able to boot Knoppix off of CD and have it run decently to see if that's what you want on your box.
Cheers,
The Czar
No matter what linux you use, you can always build an SMP kernel later.