Hi everyone. I sure do hope that you can help me...

As the subject points out, I've got a Pentium 4 system in which the HyperThreading does not seem to work. I'll try to give you as much info as possible without flooding massive logs

The story is, I bought a machine. The motherboard is Asus P5P800, which supports HT and in the BIOS settings HT is enabled. So far so good? Or is it's chipset (865PE) a PITA?

The processor is Pentium 4 3.00 GHz 800 MHz FSB with 1MB L2 cache. Please note that the motherboard has LGA775 socket. Is it possible that the processor does not support HT? In /proc/cpuinfo the processor has "ht"-flag, whatever that means.

As I bought the machine built I am not 101% sure that the processor truly supports HT. Then again, do I have a reason to believe otherwise? I think that I asked for HT and the clerk said "yeah"

My operating system is SUSE 9.2 which I installed via FTP. The kernel is:
*** uname -a ***
Linux 65 2.6.8-24.11-smp #1 SMP Fri Jan 14 13:01:26 UTC 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
***
The kernel is installed by YAST and YOU updated it afterwards.

/proc/cpuinfo shows only one processor. I have no Windows to try this hardware with.

Additionally, the machine does not shutdown properly. According to SUSE support site, that is the symptom when having SMP-kernel in single-processor system.

Is there any way to avoid kernel compile, as I'm trying to keep this whole machine up with YAST.

Thanks in advance.

first i don't think the asus P5P800 has a LGA 775 socket.
http://indigo.intel.com/mbsg/details.aspx?compID=2455
that has a mPGA 478 socket

it looks like the chip with the LGA 775 uses asus P5GDC PRO
http://indigo.intel.com/mbsg/details.aspx?compID=2456

so assuming you know mob is a P5P800 Intel® 865PE Chipset
there is only one Intel 3.06 chip without HT that could be on there
it would show 512 KB L2 cache and 533 MHz FSB
it has a FC-PGA2 socket for the 845 chipset but apearently can work with
478-pin 865 ???
it would have SL6PG printed on it
all the others have hyperthreading

so i bet your cpu does have hyperthreading
where did you get the reference to LGA 775 from ?

You sure about this ???.
If you "cat /proc/cpuinfo", and see CPU 1, it's actually the *second* CPU.
Try less instead.

Guess how I know this ....

I believe that URL shows us Intel P4P800-X. My MB is this: http://uk.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P5P800&langs=11

I believe so too. Still, it's not working

Yes, I am 100% positive on this. And it shows CPU 0 in fact.

***/proc/cpuinfo***
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 4
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
stepping : 1
cpu MHz : 3008.447
cache size : 1024 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 5
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx pn
i monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr
bogomips : 5931.00
******

From the very beginning of /var/log/boot.msg

***/var/log/boot.msg***
<6>Intel MultiProcessor Specification v1.4
<6> Virtual Wire compatibility mode.
<6>OEM ID: ASUSTeK Product ID: APIC at: 0xFEE00000
<4>Processor #0 15:4 APIC version 20
<6>I/O APIC #2 Version 32 at 0xFEC00000.
<4>Enabling APIC mode: Flat. Using 1 I/O APICs
<6>Processors: 1
........
<4>CPU0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz stepping 01
<4>per-CPU timeslice cutoff: 2925.21 usecs.
<4>task migration cache decay timeout: 3 msecs.
<6>Total of 1 processors activated (5931.00 BogoMIPS).
<4>WARNING: 1 siblings found for CPU0, should be 2
********

Hmm, a warning? Still, as you can see /proc/cpuinfo shows 2 siblings. Whatever that means.

I hope this HW is not broken.

Only other thing I can suggest is BIOS level.
I have a P4P800-E, and the BIOS was *way* out of date - new chips get added all the time.

I downloaded a new BIOS level, and up it all came - everything else was in place, but not able to be used.

I just updated the BIOS from rev. 1005 (09/23/04) to rev 1007 (02/04/05) which is the latest from asus.com, but it didn't help a bit. Boot messages and /proc/cpuinfo remain practically the same, including the sibling-warning.

I would really appreciate if someone could confirm that they have HT working with Linux in Asus P5P800 or vice versa obviously. Despite excessive googling I have not been able to find a solution to this problem...

Problem solved... in Grub kernel parameters there was "acpi=off" which obviously should be "acpi=on". I don't remember if I chose so during installation but I doubt it. I don't know if this is a SUSE bug...

Anyway I hope this thread helps someone. Thanks everyone who tried to help me!

Thanks for posting back with the solution finnjimm, and congrats on solving the problem -- J.W.

No prob J.W.

Now that I have had some time to think this problem through, I think there might be a bug in SUSE installer. I recall faintly that I chose to start install without acpi to avoid some non-existant problems or something like that. It may be that SUSE installer then passed the acpi=no parameter to the installed kernel. Since I have a HT-enabled processor it has a "ht"-flag. I have understood that when the installer sees this flag it installs SMP-kernel. This leads to an quite irritating bug which causes the computer not to shutdown properly (Due to the SMP-kernel + only 1 CPU combination). Maybe the installer should not install SMP-kernel if there is no acpi enabled.

While I'm at it, I could white a small howto for HyperThreading in Linux. If I had these instructions, I would have been a happy boy...

Follow these steps to enable/troubleshoot HT:

1: Check your hardware for HyperThreading. Processor from http://www.intel.com/design/Pentium4/prodbref/ and motherboard from the manual or web.
2: Check your BIOS so that HT and ACPI is enabled.
3: If you already have Linux installed, go to console and type "cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor" and hit enter. On my system it says:
***
finnjimm@linux:~> cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
processor : 0
processor : 1
finnjimm@linux:~>
***
As you can see, there are two processors, and you have HT working.

4: If your /proc/cpuinfo shows only 1 processor, check that you have SMP-kernel. To do so:
***
finnjimm@linux:~> uname -a
Linux linux 2.6.8-24.11-smp #1 SMP Fri Jan 14 13:01:26 UTC 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
finnjimm@linux:~>
***
If there is no SMP, refer to your distributions documents and install one.

5: If you have HT-capable hardware and SMP-kernel but fail to find the second processor, check is ACPI is enabled in your system. Go to your distributions boot loader configuration and look for acpi-related kernel parameters. If there is "acpi=off", change it to "acpi=on". Of course, if you know ACPI will cause you problems, try other parameters: http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/10/81_acpi.html (for example acpi=ht seems good enough). I'm not sure if these are SUSE-specific parameters. After changing the bootloader configuration (remember LILO specialities) reboot and enjoy your enhanced HyperThreaded Linux goodness...

If anyone know more about this, please post a message here since I really would like to know the bottoms of this issue...

Hi,
I was running Asus p4b533-e 1 gig corsair 3.06 HT and wondered what the heck I ws doing. Every ported game I found for linux has left me wishing I was ignorant of Linux, I am tired of windoze but it seems to be the only platform with (gamers choice). All I really want to play is BFV and check my email but wine didn't do it for me. I have played with suse 9.2 but believe that Fedora core 3 is superior for some reason. I just don't know what you would do with that much power in Linux. Isn't the whole idea with linux to do more with less and to avoid viruses and the blue screen of death. LOL. I dunno maybe bored looking for some options but I have not found them here. A word of hope I pulled an old system out of my closet an 800 duron and 256 pc 133 and Fedora 3 blazes on it (but for what?) So I can feel some sort of Linux euphoria. Maybe I need a second job if I have offended anyone sorry but I am a little discouraged at my linux gaming experiance. Well if anyone knows how to port or play BFV on linux with out monthly subscriptions I would be endebted and promise not to post long boring posts like this (cause I would be busy playing games LOL) L8ter Mike