SMP and upgrade questions
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If I have an athlon 64 processor and enabled "virtualization" in the bios of my mobo, do I need to use Symmetic Multiprocessor Processing in the installation of pfsense 1.2.3 RC1?
Also, if I update to the latest snapshot using the firmware updater of pfsense, will it retain the SMP feature enabled? Or do I have to re-enable it?
In the latest snapshot page http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/updates/ which of "nanobsd" and "full update" will I choose?
And lastly, in this live installer page http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/livecd_installer/ , why do the files have an extension of .iso.gz and not .iso only? How will you burn an .iso.gz image in Windows? I thought those were for Linux?
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If I have an athlon 64 processor and enabled "virtualization" in the bios of my mobo, do I need to use Symmetic Multiprocessor Processing in the installation of pfsense 1.2.3 RC1?
Virtualization most likely enables AMD-V capable processors to use that set. If your Athlon 64 is older than May 23rd, 2006 it probably won't do anything. Also, AMD-V doesn't have anything to do with SMP, and it won't do anything for the host operating system, only for guest virtual machines to feel more at home.
Also, if I update to the latest snapshot using the firmware updater of pfsense, will it retain the SMP feature enabled? Or do I have to re-enable it?
That's a great question, I truly don't know.
In the latest snapshot page http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/updates/ which of "nanobsd" and "full update" will I choose?
They are snapshots, pick the one you like the most, or one that has been mentioned as working on the forums. It's 50/50 really, some of the snapshots might not even boot (Specially the 2.0 ones).
And lastly, in this live installer page http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/livecd_installer/ , why do the files have an extension of .iso.gz and not .iso only? How will you burn an .iso.gz image in Windows? I thought those were for Linux?
Winrar is .gz capable. Just extract it (you will get a regular .iso) and burn it. According to their FAQ:
Does WinRAR support the GZ format?
WinRAR provides basic operations for GZ files created by other tools:
view contents, extract files, show comments and archive information.
You can use the convert function to convert .gz files into .rar format.
You do not need to have any external programs to handle these formats.
The Gnu Zip file format (.gz, .gzip) is a UNIX compression utility that compresses
a single file at a time. -
If I have an athlon 64 processor and enabled "virtualization" in the bios of my mobo, do I need to use Symmetic Multiprocessor Processing in the installation of pfsense 1.2.3 RC1?
Probably not. VT only helps with VMware, VirtualBox, and other Hypervisors. If it's not talking about VT, then you probably don't need it anyhow. If that is a feature like Hyperthreading, it really won't gain you much if anything (And may hurt). If you only have one CPU with one core, you can use either the SMP or UP kernel safely. SMP is the default in FreeBSD since 7.x, but there are still some edge cases where the SMP kernel has bugs that are not present in the UP kernel. YMMV
Also, if I update to the latest snapshot using the firmware updater of pfsense, will it retain the SMP feature enabled? Or do I have to re-enable it?
It should keep what you have. If you are in doubt, do a console update from URL and it will prompt you for the kernel choice.
In the latest snapshot page http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/updates/ which of "nanobsd" and "full update" will I choose?
If you are running a nanobsd embedded image, use those, if you are running a full install made from a livecd, use the full install.
And lastly, in this live installer page http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_7_2/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/livecd_installer/ , why do the files have an extension of .iso.gz and not .iso only? How will you burn an .iso.gz image in Windows? I thought those were for Linux?
It's just a compressed format like .zip, .rar, etc. You can use something like 7-zip to decompress it, then burn.