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Office Portfolio on osr507 SMP

Trying to bring old, old software to modern systems..

From: Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com>
Subject: Re: SMP issue, OSR 507, Office Portfolio
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 02:34:21 GMT
References: <3F398395.C830451@tenzing.org> 

Roger Cornelius wrote:

> We have been successfully running SCO Office Portfolio for the last
> several years as we have upgraded UNIX/OpenServer from 3.2v4.2 to the
> current OSR 5.0.7.  Starting with about 5.0.2 (I think) OP would no
> longer run if we had the SMP software installed.  OP would fail with the
> message:
> 
> MV wiockeys() failed!  Can't register hotkeys
> 
> This is actually the message I get with 5.0.7 but it is the same or
> similar as previous OS versions.  Since sar reports didn't show any
> performance bottleneck, I just uninstalled SMP and we ran without it and
> OP works fine in that case.  We're now in the process of upgrading an
> aging server to a new one, which, though we didn't order it, was shipped
> with a second processor installed.  I tried installing SMP and, not
> surprisingly, OP won't run.  I know that OP hasn't been supported for
> years, but I'd love to be able to use it and the second processor at the
> same time.  Is there any chance of making it work?  On a side note, the
> new server has XEON processors.  If I can't run OP with SMP, will I be
> able to run it with one XEON processor with the osr507up Hyper-Threading
> update installed?
> 
> I've run truss against the OP pmiew.rts binary.  It forks a new process
> which ultimately dies with a segmentation fault.  I can provide the
> trace if needed.

OSR5 `truss` is imperfect; one of its faults is that it sometimes causes
a process to SIGSEGV when it would have been fine when run standalone.
It's possible the process was going to SIGSEGV by itself, but that's
probably an observation artifact.

My desktop has a Pentium 4 "2.40C GHz", 800FSB, that supports
hyperthreading.  I installed OP on it and it fails with the "wiockeys"
message on some runs.  I actually see three different behaviors:
sometimes it hangs, sometimes it fails with "wiockeys", sometimes it
starts successfully (with a "Caldaemon process has stopped due to a
fatal error\nF1 to clear reminder" complaint).  BTW when I say
"installed" I actually mean "copied files from a 3.2v4.2 system that
once ran OP" -- I don't even know if it works correctly on the original
system, and I don't know anything about running, installing or
administrating the beast myself.

When I `truss`, it usually does the third thing (seems to work).

If I disable a CPU (`cpuonoff -i 2`), it usually seems to work (with or
without `truss`).

I'm doing the `truss` in the `op` shell script,

  runapp truss -o /tmp/op.truss $OALIB/mvw/pmview.rts -R "$OALIB/oadaemon"

instead of:

  runapp $OALIB/mvw/pmview.rts -R "$OALIB/oadaemon"

The variant behavior between truss/no-truss and SMP/disabled strongly
implies that this is a timing problem.  It's probably forking a child,
then assuming some events will occur in a certain sequence which isn't
true on an SMP system.

Since you know how to install & use OP, you're in a better position to
test this...

Pathetic idea, but, what if you `cpuonoff -i 2` (etc.), disable all your
extra processors; then start OP; then reenable them.  Does OP continue
to work?  Obviously this isn't a viable way to run a system, I'm just
trying to figure out if the problem is pervasive, or if there's just one
small hump to get over.

>Bela<

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