help! multi-threading problem on hyperthreading smp linux server

[Aahz]

In article <2004021012361076434601 at k2.sage.att.com>,
Garry Hodgson  <garry at research.att.com> wrote:
>
>a colleague of mine has seen an odd problem in some code of ours. we
>initially noticed it on webware, but in distilling a test case it seems
>to be strictly a python issue. in the real system, it manifests as
>webware just locking up, for no apparent reason, until we kill it.
>we've also had the python interpreter running webware die on occasion.
>it works fine on our desktop linux and windows machines, but fails on
>the production hardware. the main difference being that the production
>hardware is a dual Xenon machine with hyperthreading enabled.

What version of Python?  What happens if you enable both CPUs without
hyperthreading?  What happens if you only start ten threads (fifty
threads isn't huge, but it's definitely large)?  The last time I saw or
heard of significant problems like this was in the Python 1.5.1 days, and
Python 2.x fixed a few more bugs.

Have you applied all relevant OS patches and/or tried upgrading to a
newer kernel?  Can you test the production system (or an equivalent) with
Windows?  What happens if you run an equivalent test using C code?
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"The joy of coding Python should be in seeing short, concise, readable
classes that express a lot of action in a small amount of clear code -- 
not in reams of trivial code that bores the reader to death."  --GvR