New install of Fedora Core 4 - GRUB shows 2 Fedora's

[Felecha]

2 Hard drives, 1st is XP Pro, 2nd is half for XP storage, half for Linux. I just installed Fedora Core 4.

The GRUB loader comes up to give me my boot options and it shows

Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp)
Fedora Core-up (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
Other

I've tried both the Fedora's, both seem to be the same.

???

 

[Felecha]

I found out about grub.conf and it shows 2 different kernel versions. Also in /boot there are 2 of everything, an FC4 version and an FC4smp version.

Here's the grub.conf:

default=2
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp)
root (hd1,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp.img
title Fedora Core-up (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
root (hd1,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
title XP Pro
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

 

[daniel49]

thats normal fed core 3 shows 3 titles everytime I update kernel.
Ubuntu shows 2 + memtest,
just set the default for the top fedora core 4 or xp whichever you like and remember to start counting at "0" not "1"

 

[Felecha]

So the two versions of the kernel are the same?

I figured default=2 meant XP Pro so it was 0-based

 

[kamper]

The first one listed is for multi processor machines. I suppose (although I don't know) that the smp one would adapt fine to a single processor but might be a little slower than the single and the single would run on multiple processors but would only use one of them.

 

[Felecha]

OK, am I right that my new Athlon 64 X2 is a multiprocessor? So I should use the smp version?

 

[kamper]

Believe so. Try poking around in /proc after booting with each kernel and see if you can find the difference. For the fun of it, find something that will hit the cpu real hard (dead simple if you know any programming language) and check out the differences when running 1 and 2 instances with each kernel.

 

[Felecha]

you mean like a nice little infinite loop?

 

[kamper]

Something like that, but make it something timeable so you know how much work is being done. Or print out a message every so often...

 

[Nothinman]

/proc/cpuinfo and 'top' should both show 2 CPUs if you have a SMP machine. A SMP kernel will run fine on a UP machine but with a little bit of overhead, it shouldn't be noticable for day to day use.