Lustre discuss - Nov 2009 - 1.8.1.1, 2.6.27.29-0.1_lustre.1.8.1.1-default and HIGHMEM 64G

Hello. Is there any problem with 8GB RAM and lustre ? Default binary 
lustre-enabled 2.6.27.29 kernel for SLES11 provided by SUN has 4GB limit. 
I tried to rebuild from appropriate linux-patched-source, also provided by 
SUN, with only this kernel option changed, and I discovered, that despite 
of build of vmlinuz and lustre modules finished succesfully, one 
absolutely required module fsfilt_ldiskfs returns strange errors, unknown 
symbols like ldiskfs_iget and more. Some test builds also resulted with 
invalid module format. I''d assume some locally-related error, but
binary
kernel ( 2.6.27.29-0.1_lustre.1.8.1.1-default ) works like charm, except 
it sees ~4GB RAM, while my machine (x86 Xeon Core 2) has 8GB. Currently 
I''m going to wait and see, hoping next SUN builds will have 64G option 
set. I didn''t look into 64bit binary kernel (also provided by SUN), 
because my guess is it won''t work on Xeon, don''t have so much
time now to
make sure about it..

In general, it seems, that the result of self-made build of kernel and 
lustre, even with detailed documentation instructions and supported 
versions of kernel/utils/build environment still is a little bit 
unpredictable.. I really hope I''ll join vanilla kernels someday.

Regards,
DT

--

On 2009-11-07, at 09:17, Piotr Wadas wrote:
> Hello. Is there any problem with 8GB RAM and lustre ? Default binary
> lustre-enabled 2.6.27.29 kernel for SLES11 provided by SUN has 4GB  
> limit.
Are you sure you are using the x86_64 kernel and not the i386 kernel?   
We have lots of customers using this kernel with 8GB or more of RAM.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.