On Jun 30, 2005, at 4:05 PM, Andy Ruhl wrote:

> On 6/30/05, John Niven <senseamp@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm totally new to this *NIX thing! I have an old Tyan Motherboard 
>> with
>> dual 200MHz Pentium Pro CPU's. I thought this would be a wonderful
>> learning tool. So I tried loading a copy of Red Hat 8 that I was
>> donated, but I found this unsatisfying, because it was all too easy to
>> get going :-) So I downloaded netBSD 2.0 and burnt an ISO disk. I got
>> my system to install, I've managed to add a user account and got
>> X-windows working!! I think this is good coming from a Macintosh user
>> :-)
>>
>> But how do I know if I'm using both CPU? Did I have to do something
>> special during the install?
>>
>> When I boot the system a lot of writing flashes by :-P Looks
>> informative. How do I slow it down?
>>
>> I guess I have to tackle installing packages next. Do I need to do
>> anything different to work with dual CPU?
>>
>> I went to my local bookshop - found a book on everything except netBSD
>> :-(
>
> sysctl hw.ncpu
>
> if it says hw.ncpu=1, you're only using 1 CPU.
>
> You need to get a SMP kernel and put it in place of the standard
> kernel. Or better yet, build one as per the guide.
>
> There aren't any good english language books on NetBSD that I know of.
> But a guy named Michael W. Lucas has written good ones on FreeBSD and
> OpenBSD. Every time he shows up I make it a point to bug him about
> doing a NetBSD book.
>
> Andy

Ah! So I tried that and it says "hw.ncpu = 1"

I guess I'm going to have to try and build my own kernel - can't have a 
perfectly good CPU idle!

And thanks for the replies everyone, looks like this list is VERY 
active :-) I'm going to need help!

John