[Asterisk-Users] Info request from Sangoma users

[Patrick]

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 12:59 +0000, Gavin Hamill wrote:
[snip]
> What kind of CPUs are you using? Also, single or dual (or a single with
> hyperthreading ?) What onboard L2 cache do they have? My last hope is to
> try a P4 machine with 1MB cache, since the others I've used have 512K..
> 
> They're all Dell machines - and I know the reaction that usually evokes
> when dealing with Digium hardware (been there, seen that...) - I thought
> someone like Sangoma with many more years in the business would be more
> immune to things like this :(

Been a while since I used Asterisk on a Dell box but I remember I had to
turn off HT. Have you tried that? Think you can do it either in the BIOS
or booting the kernel with "noht". On Dell boxes I have also seen some
funky "NMI received for unknown reason. Dazed and confused" messages
in /var/log/messages. There is some boot option called "nmi_watchdog"
that can be set at 0 or 1 that perhaps solves that one. When things get
really weird try reseating the memory modules. And if you have a dual
Xeon box and only one cpu shows up when booting Linux try reseating the
processors too. While you are at it reseat everything you can find :)
As a test you can also disable the onboard nic and stick in a quality
nic on its own interrupt to see if that helps. And off course disable in
the BIOS everything that you do not use (serial/parallel/usb etc.).

Regards,
Patrick