To get full functionality from our systems, we had to install an SMP kernel. The default non-SMP kernel only saw 1 of our 4 CPUs and 1 GB of our 4 GB of RAM.

We chose to stick with a 2.4 kernel, to be conservative, and stick with what Debian recommends.

Install the kernel headers and SMP kernel image.

# apt-get install kernel-headers-2.4.27-2 kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686-smp

The package installation also updated the GRUB configuration.

Reboot the server to load the new kernel:

# reboot

On reboot, check to see that the system sees all 4 CPUs:

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

Check to see that 4 GB of RAM is also enabled:

$ cat /proc/meminfo

(There are several other ways to verify this information, including the top and free commands.)

We'd like to compile a custom kernel to help with a few more issues:

• Remove ACPI support, and add APM support. (Both deal power management, but our systems only support the older APM standard.)
• Remove USB and sound, as our systems do not have those features.
• Remove SymBIOS SCSI drivers, as we've got nothing attached to those controllers. (We're using the ida driver for the SmartArray 4200 RAID controller.)