32bit OS on 64Bit Hardware...

[Frank, Ryan W]

That did it!  The .i686 kernel instead of the athlon version fixed it :)
whooo hoo... Thanks again for your help!  It is much appreciated!

As I had an idea it was PAE related (in my google research) how would
one be able to tell if the running kernel supports PAE?  Also how did
you know I was running the athlon kernel not the i686... I am guessing
the timestamp?

Working:
Linux cltrsklccs01 2.4.21-40.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Feb 2 22:22:39 EST 2006
i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

Non-working:
Linux cltrsklccs01 2.4.21-40.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Feb 2 22:14:12 EST 2006
i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

Rpm -q -i didn't even show the version...
[root at cltrsklccs01 root]# rpm -q -i kernel-smp-2.4.21-40.EL
Name        : kernel-smp                   Relocations: (not
relocatable)
Version     : 2.4.21                            Vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
Release     : 40.EL                         Build Date: Thu 02 Feb 2006
10:39:14 PM EST
Install Date: Thu 01 Jun 2006 08:09:43 AM EDT      Build Host:
hs20-bc1-7.build.redhat.com
Group       : System Environment/Kernel     Source RPM:
kernel-2.4.21-40.EL.src.rpm
Size        : 19616544                         License: GPLv2
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Fri 03 Mar 2006 01:59:42 PM EST, Key ID
219180cddb42a60e
Packager    : Red Hat, Inc. <http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla>
Summary     : The Linux kernel compiled for SMP machines.
Description :
This package includes an SMP version of the Linux kernel. It is
required only on machines with two or more CPUs, although it should
work on single-CPU boxes.


-Ryan 

-----Original Message-----
From: Arjan van de Ven [mailto:arjan at fenrus.demon.nl] 
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2006 7:07 AM
To: Frank, Ryan W
Cc: amd64-list at redhat.com
Subject: RE: 32bit OS on 64Bit Hardware...

On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 06:58 -0400, Frank, Ryan W wrote:
> 
> Linux cltrsklccs01 2.4.21-40.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Feb 2 22:14:12 EST 2006
> i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

ah ha! 

in RHEL3, the "athlon" smp kernel is not PAE enabled, only the "i686"
smp kernel is.... and you're using the athlon kernel afaics.

so what you'd need to do is rpm -e of your existing kernel-smp, and grab
the i686 variant instead of the athlon one and install that...


(so this one extra line has been very useful in diagnosing this :)