Re: Status of SMP on sbus machines?

[Chris Ross <cross+netbsd%distal.com@localhost>]

On Oct 20, 2008, at 12:49, Michael wrote:
> Try to reproduce it in gdb, see if there's a pattern in what  
> triggers it in different binaries. You mentioned simple Hello World  
> type programs triggering it - you may want to try different compiler  
> settings ( optimization and such )

  Sadly, it seems to be inconsistent based on compilation.  One of  
the perl tests that was failing, consistently, gdb showed:

Program received signal SIGILL, Illegal instruction.
0x0000000041502fc0 in __cxa_finalize@plt ()
   from /data/obj/lang/perl5/work/perl-5.10.0/t/../lib/auto/PerlIO/ 
scalar/scalar
.so
(gdb) where
#0  0x0000000041502fc0 in __cxa_finalize@plt ()
   from /data/obj/lang/perl5/work/perl-5.10.0/t/../lib/auto/PerlIO/ 
scalar/scalar
.so
#1  0x0000000041401acc in ?? ()
   from /data/obj/lang/perl5/work/perl-5.10.0/t/../lib/auto/PerlIO/ 
scalar/scalar
.so
#2  0x0000000041401acc in ?? ()
   from /data/obj/lang/perl5/work/perl-5.10.0/t/../lib/auto/PerlIO/ 
scalar/scalar
.so
Previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)
(gdb)

  However, I performed a "make clean" for pkgsrc/lang/perl5, and then  
rebuilt it (with a simple "make"), and now it's passing it's tests.   
Including ones it had previously consistently failed on.  Apparently,  
the same input to the build-chain can produce binaries that do or  
don't exhibit this problem.

  This will be a nightmare to trace.  :-(  Maybe I should just swap  
in Ultra-II processors....

              - Chris