Great, thanks.

Just booted into 2.6.27.4-linode14 on my VPS (which serves out my blog {The Proliferation of Linux} and my site).

So far everything seems to work. I think that things might be a bit more zippy now, that's a purely subjective observation.

The server (a Linode 360) runs:

*Wordpress MU
*Varnish 2
*Lighttpd (and PHP through FastCGI)

Here's some results from Apache benchmark (quite impressive, I like to think):

hex-vps ~ # ab -n 10000 -c 50 http://proliferationoflinux.org/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking proliferationoflinux.org (be patient)

Server Software:        lighttpd/1.4.20
Server Hostname:        proliferationoflinux.org
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        29109 bytes

Concurrency Level:      50
Time taken for tests:   1.392 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      295349990 bytes
HTML transferred:       291090000 bytes
Requests per second:    7184.97 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       6.959 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.139 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          207234.49 [Kbytes/sec] received

I switched to 2.6.27.4-linode14 and rebooted, and everything came up perfect. Granted I don't do much more than serve up websites, ftp, and svn. But everything worked just great.

1) Munin's CPU graphs no longer showed idle time correctly.

2) Munin's display of memory cache looked most peculiar for my site.

3) Three times in a couple of days I had unusual 'disk io' alerts for no reason I could find.


I went back to the standard "latest 2.6" as before. Munin graphs now look normal. I'll wait and see about disk io alerts.

James

Munin's memory cache graph now looks as it used to, fairly smooth, not anywhere nearly so chopped up and fragmented as with the newer kernel.

Link to munin image of cache memory showing this:
http://zunzun.com/choppy_cache.png

Link to munin image of CPU showing bad display of idle cpu:
http://zunzun.com/cpu_idle.png

James

Hmm. My munin graphs looks fine using the new 2.6.27: http://www.donsbox.com/munin/

What version of munin are you using? I'm on 1.34.

from http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/munin Ubuntu Intrepid is at 1.2.6, and according to the munin web site at http://munin.projects.linpro.no/ that is indeed the latest stable version. The version you are using must be from the far future.

I don't normally use this kind of arcane technical jargon, but my graphs are definitely poopy-doopy.

James

I am running Gentoo x64 and this new kernel is unable to boot properly.

Not sure why (tell me how to find out and I'll cooperate) but this bug applies even to default Gentoo installation.

 * Setting system clock using the hardware clock [UTC] ...
 * Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method.
Use the --debug option to see the details of our search for an access method.Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method.
Use the --debug option to see the details of our search for an access method.
 * Failed to set clock You will need to set the clock yourself
                                                                          [ !! ]
 * Configuring kernel parameters ...                                      [ ok ]
 * Updating environment ...                                               [ ok ]
 * Cleaning /var/lock, /var/run ...                                       [ ok ]
 * Wiping /tmp directory ...                                              [ ok ]
 * Device initiated services: udev-postmount
 * Setting hostname to fell ...                                           [ ok ]
 * Loading key mappings ...                                               [ ok ]
 * Setting terminal encoding to UTF-8 ...                                 [ ok ]
 * Setting user font ...                                                  [ ok ]
 * Starting lo
 *   Bringing up lo
 *     127.0.0.1/8
                                                                          [ ok ]
 *   Adding routes
 *     127.0.0.0/8 ...                                                    [ ok ]
 * Initializing random number generator ...                               [ ok ]
INIT: Entering runlevel: 3
 * Starting metalog ...                                                   [ ok ]
 * Starting eth0
 *   Bringing up eth0
 *     66.246.76.xxx
                                                                          [ ok ]
 *   Adding routes
 *     default via 66.246.76.1 ...                                        [ ok ]
 * Mounting network filesystems ...                                       [ ok ]
 * Starting local ...                                                     [ ok ]

After that, it just hangs up forever.

It's booting all the way, you're just not getting a getty login prompt on the correct console device node.

Do you have "Xenify" set to Yes in your configuration profile?

Do you get a getty login prompt on the 2.6.18-x86_64 kernel?

Can you paste the getty lines from your /etc/inittab?

For reference, 2.6.18 kernels want /dev/tty1 for console, whereas the pv_ops kernels (those > 2.6.18) want /dev/hvc0. Xenify is supposed to take care of making this modification for you, even when switching between kernels.

-Chris

Thank you very much. Didn't know that one.

So no, I didn't have xenification turned on because it wasn't need in 2.6.18_x64.

One more thing - I am missing /proc/xen directory with this new kernel. Is it feature?

It's a completely different implementation of xen guest support.

Just wanted to give the thumbs up from me. Been running it since about the time this thread started and no complaints. Nice to see so much effort being put into keeping us current.

I'm now inclined to believe this is munin-specific, and that memory cache is fine.

James