Kernel Configuration(CPU types and SMP)

[Personalfreedom]

Hello it's me again! I am wondering if I can get a few quick pointers in regards to configuring a kernel.

I have recently completed a LFS build. Im going through the kernel configuration (via make menuconfig) again this is for the most recent kernel release v2.6.28.8

one thing im some what unsure of is a couple options:

for Option: Processor Type and features>Processor Family ( option )

I am building for a intel mobile centrino CPU Which family would this CPU fall under? Pentium pro, pentium III, pentium M Pentium 4 etc?

Currently the option is set to pentium pro

as for the second option Symmetric Multi-Processing is this strictly for 2 physically different CPUS or does this effect Multi-core CPU's aswell?


The other issue is setting the High Resolution Framebuffer console.

I selected the options I felt would give me that high res boot up and text based console but im still big and ugly (lol the console you twits)

the laptop has a radeon GPU it's a hp nc8230 if sombody could point me in the right direction or which options need to be set for the highres (like suse was when you hit esc during bootup to watch the detailed bootup)

that would be great

Thank you so much in advance!

[Personalfreedom]

well after a bit more research I found the solution to my high res console.

I needed to apparently add an extra command to my kernel parameters in my grub menu entry in this case vga=791 gives me a nice 1024x768 high res console to work with.

after reading a bit more I have decided to go with pentium M and SMP off because apparently that just runs faster.

call it a bump because i would still love some input or a heads up to assist others woot! I loves this linux it makes personal computing waaaay more entertaining than windows ever did.

[retsaw]

Centrino isn't a CPU. Centrino is some Intel branding for a combination of CPU, chipset and wireless for mobile use, but it tends to imply a Pentium-M, so you have probably made the right choice for CPU type, you get get lots of information about your CPU by typing "cat /proc/cpuinfo" at the command-line, which will tell you which processor you actually have.

SMP is for muiti-core as well as seperate CPUs, and there shouldn't be any performance penalty for using a SMP kernel on a single core machine. However, I believe SMP is also used for hyperthreading on CPUs and I have heard that hyperthreading in some cases can result in slower performance, so if your CPU is a single-core with hyperthreading you may get better performance without SMP, then again it could be better with it, it really depends on whether hyperthreading helps or hinders performance for your usage, which you'll have to evaluate yourself.

Having said all this, I don't think your CPU supports hyperthreading, but I can't be sure.

[Personalfreedom]

very intresting and thank you for the reply after some research on the subject your initial thoughts of hyperthreading have been proven in regards to my cpu the pentium M in fact does not support it good show mate!

again I want to thank you for the responce as it opened up more doors of educational material!

FYI I dropped LFS for gentoo as i noticed the BLFS book was so terminally limited in packages that are "Supported" by the mailing lists etc.

though the build process was educational and a worthwhile experince but gentoo offers more IMHO.