[Asterisk-Users] PCI front mount chassis?

[Rich Adamson]

> > I too am running 6 cards in my system, although not in a "high traffic 
> > capacity" load environment.
> > 
> > So far my (limited) high-load simulations have shown no problems.
> 
> 
> So - is it apocryphal that the Digium cards (drivers) won't share
> interrupts?
> 
> If there is a real issue with sharing interrupts then it seems to me
> to be a bug that needs fixing.  PCI bus supports shared interrupts,
> why doesn't the hardware/driver?

In most cases, sharing an interrupt is not a problem at all. There have
been a few cases where _some_ issue was resolved by moving cards around,
however the majority of those seem to be: a) abrupt system changes with
no effort to seriously identify the root-cause, b) newbie installations
where the condition of the underlying system infrastructure is totally
unknown, or, c) wild recommendations that might have had some basis a
long time ago but no longer apply.

Example: 'cat /proc/interrupts'
  9: 1854652239          XT-PIC  ehci-hcd, eth0, wcfxo, Intel ICH4
works just fine, and I can't imagine a more demanding irq arrangement
where the only nic shares with an x100p, etc.

Obviously there are performance limits and expecting multiple quad T1 
cards or some other _specific_ high-volume configuration to share one 
or two interrupts could create a problem. But, engineering a system for
those conditions is no more difficult then understanding the 
requirements of whatever cards are being used and dealing with them 
appropriately.