Puppet users - Nov 2012 - Solaris processor count facts - bug or feature?

Hi all,

This relates to a discussion we are having in the Redmine ticket 
https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/11612.

I am extending the processorcount, physicalprocessorcount and processorX 
facts that exist for Linux and Solaris.

I personally find the behaviour of the processor facts on Solaris 
surprising -

myhost# facter |grep proc
physicalprocessorcount => 1
processor0 => SPARC64-VII
processor1 => SPARC64-VII
processor2 => SPARC64-VII
processor3 => SPARC64-VII
processor4 => SPARC64-VII
processor5 => SPARC64-VII
processor6 => SPARC64-VII
processor7 => SPARC64-VII
processorcount => 4


We can see that physicalprocessorcount is returning the number of physical 
CPUs which is good, the processorX array is getting populated with virtual 
CPUs, and processorcount is returning the number of cores.  The command 
used to set processorcount is essentially kstat cpu_info |grep core_id 
|sort -u.

However, I suspect Solaris sysadmins are more familiar with using commands 
like psrinfo, prtdiag, and mpstat to get CPU count, and these all report 
the number of CPUs as 8 rather than 4.

If I was writing this from scratch I would have a fact called something 
like ProcessorCoreCount and have that report 4 and then a separate fact 
ProcessorCount that would report 8 - as psrinfo is doing.

Therefore I am interested to know if others out there regard this behaviour 
as a ''bug or feature'', and also get some feedback on how
people are using
these facts out there.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Alex Harvey

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On Tuesday, November 20, 2012 12:02:21 PM UTC+11, Alex Harvey
wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> This relates to a discussion we are having in the Redmine ticket 
> https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/11612.
>
> I am extending the processorcount, physicalprocessorcount and processorX 
> facts that exist for Linux and Solaris.
>
> I personally find the behaviour of the processor facts on Solaris 
> surprising -
>
> myhost# facter |grep proc
> physicalprocessorcount => 1
> processor0 => SPARC64-VII
> processor1 => SPARC64-VII
> processor2 => SPARC64-VII
> processor3 => SPARC64-VII
> processor4 => SPARC64-VII
> processor5 => SPARC64-VII
> processor6 => SPARC64-VII
> processor7 => SPARC64-VII
> processorcount => 4
>
>
> We can see that physicalprocessorcount is returning the number of physical 
> CPUs which is good, the processorX array is getting populated with virtual 
> CPUs, and processorcount is returning the number of cores.  The command 
> used to set processorcount is essentially kstat cpu_info |grep core_id 
> |sort -u.
>
> However, I suspect Solaris sysadmins are more familiar with using commands 
> like psrinfo, prtdiag, and mpstat to get CPU count, and these all report 
> the number of CPUs as 8 rather than 4.
>
> If I was writing this from scratch I would have a fact called something 
> like ProcessorCoreCount and have that report 4 and then a separate fact 
> ProcessorCount that would report 8 - as psrinfo is doing.
>
> Therefore I am interested to know if others out there regard this 
> behaviour as a ''bug or feature'', and also get some
feedback on how people
> are using these facts out there.
>
There were no responses here - I''d like to bump this up for a second go
at
getting some responses.  

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Feature :) 

This all comes down to the architecture of your processor. 

Your SPARC64-VII processors is a quad-core, two-way SMT processor. So, you 
have one physical CPU, four cores, and 8 threads. 

physicalprocessorcount is derived from the output of psrinfo -p

and processorcount is derived from the *unique* list of core_ids in the 
output of /usr/sbin/kstat cpu_info - there are two for any given core_id, 
one for each thread that core can handle. 

If you do;

/usr/bin/kstat cpu_info | grep core_id 

you will see duplicate entries for each core;

[x@y ~]$ /usr/bin/kstat cpu_info | grep core_id
        core_id                         0
        core_id                         0
        core_id                         2
        core_id                         2
        core_id                         4
        core_id                         4
        core_id                         6
        core_id                         6
        core_id                         8
        core_id                         8
        core_id                         10
        core_id                         10
        core_id                         12
        core_id                         12
        core_id                         14
        core_id                         14
        core_id                         32
        core_id                         32
        core_id                         34
        core_id                         34
        core_id                         36
        core_id                         36
        core_id                         38
        core_id                         38
        core_id                         40
        core_id                         40
        core_id                         42
        core_id                         42
        core_id                         44
        core_id                         44
        core_id                         46
        core_id                         46

Hope that helps!

Andrew

On Monday, 3 December 2012 02:03:25 UTC, Alex Harvey
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, November 20, 2012 12:02:21 PM UTC+11, Alex Harvey wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This relates to a discussion we are having in the Redmine ticket 
>> https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/11612.
>>
>> I am extending the processorcount, physicalprocessorcount and
processorX
>> facts that exist for Linux and Solaris.
>>
>> I personally find the behaviour of the processor facts on Solaris 
>> surprising -
>>
>> myhost# facter |grep proc
>> physicalprocessorcount => 1
>> processor0 => SPARC64-VII
>> processor1 => SPARC64-VII
>> processor2 => SPARC64-VII
>> processor3 => SPARC64-VII
>> processor4 => SPARC64-VII
>> processor5 => SPARC64-VII
>> processor6 => SPARC64-VII
>> processor7 => SPARC64-VII
>> processorcount => 4
>>
>>
>> We can see that physicalprocessorcount is returning the number of 
>> physical CPUs which is good, the processorX array is getting populated
with
>> virtual CPUs, and processorcount is returning the number of cores.  The
>> command used to set processorcount is essentially kstat cpu_info |grep 
>> core_id |sort -u.
>>
>> However, I suspect Solaris sysadmins are more familiar with using 
>> commands like psrinfo, prtdiag, and mpstat to get CPU count, and these
all
>> report the number of CPUs as 8 rather than 4.
>>
>> If I was writing this from scratch I would have a fact called something
>> like ProcessorCoreCount and have that report 4 and then a separate fact
>> ProcessorCount that would report 8 - as psrinfo is doing.
>>
>> Therefore I am interested to know if others out there regard this 
>> behaviour as a ''bug or feature'', and also get some
feedback on how people
>> are using these facts out there.
>>
>
> There were no responses here - I''d like to bump this up for a
second go at
> getting some responses.  
>
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On Monday, December 3, 2012 9:54:49 PM UTC+11, Andrew Beresford
wrote:
>
> Feature :)
 
I do understand what the code is doing but question whether that''s what
it
should be doing.  While it''s ultimately a matter of opinion, it
violates
the ''principle of least surprise'' for me and also my Solaris
colleagues.

At any rate, I finally managed to find a multi-core linux box I could try 
this on and have confirmed that the associated linux facts behave in the 
way I would have expected them to on Solaris -

physicalprocessorcount => 1
processor0 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor1 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor2 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor3 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor4 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor5 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor6 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor7 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processorcount => 8

This is a 4-core CPU with 8 threads.  

See the spec for the i7-2600
http://ark.intel.com/products/52213

So I do think the Solaris behaviour is in error.

Maybe we need a ''processorcorecount'' fact instead?

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Apologies, 

I re-read your post and understand what you mean.

I prefer the core count definition, but whatever it is, it should be 
consistent between Linux and Solaris. 

Andrew

On Wednesday, 5 December 2012 04:37:19 UTC, Alex Harvey
wrote:
>
>
>
> On Monday, December 3, 2012 9:54:49 PM UTC+11, Andrew Beresford wrote:
>>
>> Feature :)
>
>  
> I do understand what the code is doing but question whether that''s
what it
> should be doing.  While it''s ultimately a matter of opinion, it
violates
> the ''principle of least surprise'' for me and also my
Solaris colleagues.
>
> At any rate, I finally managed to find a multi-core linux box I could try 
> this on and have confirmed that the associated linux facts behave in the 
> way I would have expected them to on Solaris -
>
> physicalprocessorcount => 1
> processor0 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processor1 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processor2 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processor3 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processor4 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processor5 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processor6 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processor7 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
> processorcount => 8
>
> This is a 4-core CPU with 8 threads.  
>
> See the spec for the i7-2600
> http://ark.intel.com/products/52213
>
> So I do think the Solaris behaviour is in error.
>
> Maybe we need a ''processorcorecount'' fact instead?
>
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> I prefer the core count definition, but whatever it is, it should be 
> consistent between Linux and Solaris. 
>
Yes it certainly should be the same on all platforms - the question is if 
we change it who is going to be impacted and how can we manage the change?  
I believe the vast majority of Puppet users run linux so probably the 
Solaris code needs to be changed to conform to the linux rather than vice 
versa.  Unless lots of people think the linux fact is in fact the one 
that''s ''wrong''?

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How about creating a processorcorecount and processorthreadcount with
"correct" meanings? That then leaves the option to deprecate
processorcount.

I''ve realised that at some point in the past I have created a
processorthreadcount fact because I needed a consistent source of this
information on both Solaris and Linux.

On 7 December 2012 00:58, Alex Harvey <alexharv074@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>> I prefer the core count definition, but whatever it is, it should be
>> consistent between Linux and Solaris.
>
>
> Yes it certainly should be the same on all platforms - the question is if
we
> change it who is going to be impacted and how can we manage the change?  I
> believe the vast majority of Puppet users run linux so probably the Solaris
> code needs to be changed to conform to the linux rather than vice versa.
> Unless lots of people think the linux fact is in fact the one
that''s
> ''wrong''?
>
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>
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On Friday, December 7, 2012 9:05:32 PM UTC+11, Andrew Beresford
wrote:
>
> How about creating a processorcorecount and processorthreadcount with 
> "correct" meanings? That then leaves the option to deprecate 
> processorcount. 
>
> I''ve realised that at some point in the past I have created a 
> processorthreadcount fact because I needed a consistent source of this 
> information on both Solaris and Linux. 
>
I''m not sure - certainly I''d agree those would be good names
for the facts
if we were starting again (and should the ''processorX'' facts
be renamed as
well)?  I think for the moment I''m just going to implement the HP-UX
facts
to work the same way as the linux facts and create a thread on the puppet 
developers list to see what others think should be done about this cores vs 
threads connundrum.  

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On 12/07/2012 11:05 AM, Andrew Beresford wrote:
> How about creating a processorcorecount and processorthreadcount with
> "correct" meanings? That then leaves the option to deprecate
> processorcount.
>
> I''ve realised that at some point in the past I have created a
> processorthreadcount fact because I needed a consistent source of this
> information on both Solaris and Linux.
+1


-- 
Jakov Sosic
www.srce.unizg.hr

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