Re: Benchmark (Phoronix): FreeBSD 9.0-RC2 vs. Oracle Linux 6.1 Server

[Francois Tigeot <ftigeot@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 03:29:25PM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> 
> This also interested me:
> 
> * Linux system crashed
>   http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2011-11/msg00008.html
> 
> * OpenIndiana system crashed same way as Linux system
>   http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2011-11/msg00017.html
> 
> I cannot help but wonder if the Linux and OpenIndiana installations were
> more stressful on the hardware -- getting more out of the system, maybe
> resulting in increased power/load, which in turn resulted in the systems
> locking up (shoddy PSU, unstable mainboard, MCH problems, etc.).
> 
> My point is that Francois states these things in such a way to imply
> that "DragonflyBSD was more stable",

Same thing can be said for FreeBSD, only Linux and OpenIndiana crashed
reliably if I remember correctly.

> when in fact I happen to wonder the
> opposite point -- that is to say, Linux and OpenIndiana were trying to
> use the hardware more-so than DragonflyBSD, thus tickled what may be a
> hardware-level problem.

I actually ran the benchmarks on two different machines with the same
hardware -- brand new Supermicro boxes with ECC memory and no cut corners.

Since then, I've found I could stop the Linux crashes by disabling some
options in the BIOS setup:
  - advanced ACPI settings (don't remember exactly which ones)
  - and a new WHEA one.

WHEA means Windows Hardware Error Architecture. For all I know, it may have
been the only culprit but I didn't have time to verify if the machines
also ran fine with only this option disabled.

-- 
Francois Tigeot