Maple troubles with SMP -- solved. How to contribute this to the FBSD documentation now?

[Geert Hendrickx]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 06:50:42PM +0200, Geert Hendrickx wrote:
> Hello, 
> 
> I'm running FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE on a hyperthreaded i386 processor.  My
> kernel has SMP enabled, and with sysctl machdep.hlt_logical_cpus=0, top
> shows two logical cpu's up and running.  Works fine.  
> 
> Now I have some weird experiences running Maple 9.5 (with Linux
> emulation).  When sysctl machdep.hlt_logical_cpus is set to 0, Maple
> won't start.  I get the splash screen, but it hangs forever (top shows a
> java process eating all cpu time).  It takes a kill -9 to stop it.  
> 
> When machdep.hlt_logical_cpus is set to 1 (single cpu), Maple starts
> fine, I can enter commands and everything works ok (except the help
> function, it crashes very often).  When I set the sysctl back to 0,
> Maple gets very unstable when I enter further commands.  Sometimes it
> hangs (without any cpu action like before), sometimes it crashes, very
> unpredictable behaviour really.  
> 
> Does anyone have any clue about what is happening?  And about who is to
> blame, FreeBSD's SMP code, Maple, or maybe the Linux emulation code?  
> 
> GH


The problems described above (posted on questions@ recently) appear to
have to do with the Java RE that comes with the newer versions of Maple
(older versions -- at least I know about version 7 -- didn't use Java,
and worked perfectly on FreeBSD).  

I have hacked and patched some Maple shell scripts, so that Maple uses
the native FreeBSD JDK which I have compiled from the Ports, and now it
seems to work right.  

When I have fully tested this, I would like to update the FreeBSD
documentation section 10.4, which describes how to get Maple running on
FreeBSD, and include the patches I've written.

GH

PS: please CC me in your replies as I am not subscribed to this list.  

-- 
:wq