[Puppet Users] Solaris processor count facts - bug or feature?

There were no responses here - I'd like to bump this up for a second go at
getting some responses.

Feature :)

This all comes down to the architecture of your processor.

Your SPARC64-VII processors is a quad-core, two-way SMT processor. So, you
have one physical CPU, four cores, and 8 threads.

physicalprocessorcount is derived from the output of psrinfo -p

and processorcount is derived from the *unique* list of core_ids in the
output of /usr/sbin/kstat cpu_info - there are two for any given core_id,
one for each thread that core can handle.

If you do;

/usr/bin/kstat cpu_info | grep core_id

you will see duplicate entries for each core;

[x@y ~]$ /usr/bin/kstat cpu_info | grep core_id
core_id 0
core_id 0
core_id 2
core_id 2
core_id 4
core_id 4
core_id 6
core_id 6
core_id 8
core_id 8
core_id 10
core_id 10
core_id 12
core_id 12
core_id 14
core_id 14
core_id 32
core_id 32
core_id 34
core_id 34
core_id 36
core_id 36
core_id 38
core_id 38
core_id 40
core_id 40
core_id 42
core_id 42
core_id 44
core_id 44
core_id 46
core_id 46

Hope that helps!

Andrew

I do understand what the code is doing but question whether that's what it
should be doing. While it's ultimately a matter of opinion, it violates
the 'principle of least surprise' for me and also my Solaris colleagues.

At any rate, I finally managed to find a multi-core linux box I could try
this on and have confirmed that the associated linux facts behave in the
way I would have expected them to on Solaris -

physicalprocessorcount => 1
processor0 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor1 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor2 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor3 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor4 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor5 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor6 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processor7 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
processorcount => 8

This is a 4-core CPU with 8 threads.

See the spec for the i7-2600
http://ark.intel.com/products/52213

So I do think the Solaris behaviour is in error.

Maybe we need a 'processorcorecount' fact instead?

Apologies,

I re-read your post and understand what you mean.

I prefer the core count definition, but whatever it is, it should be
consistent between Linux and Solaris.

Andrew

Yes it certainly should be the same on all platforms - the question is if
we change it who is going to be impacted and how can we manage the change?
I believe the vast majority of Puppet users run linux so probably the
Solaris code needs to be changed to conform to the linux rather than vice
versa. Unless lots of people think the linux fact is in fact the one
that's 'wrong'?

How about creating a processorcorecount and processorthreadcount with
"correct" meanings? That then leaves the option to deprecate
processorcount.

I've realised that at some point in the past I have created a
processorthreadcount fact because I needed a consistent source of this
information on both Solaris and Linux.

I'm not sure - certainly I'd agree those would be good names for the facts
if we were starting again (and should the 'processorX' facts be renamed as
well)? I think for the moment I'm just going to implement the HP-UX facts
to work the same way as the linux facts and create a thread on the puppet
developers list to see what others think should be done about this cores vs
threads connundrum.

+1