Hi. I have achieved booting a 2.6.18-rt5 on a dual Opteron X2 system. As I've just had the idea of disabling HPET with this version of the patch, I can't say if it could work on an earlier version (it hanged on all versions theretofore). HPET has always been activated in the kernel I've compiled before. The config is there, it's only made for an AMD 8111 motherboard with Sil SATA chipset, but IDE is activated without any need of initrd : http://ypotin.nerim.net/myconfig Apparately, the rtc works better. This kind of messages (2.6.17.7) : Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: softirq-tasklet/20[CPU#1]: BUG in __tasklet_action at kernel/softirq.c:493 Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: [<c011e467>] __WARN_ON+0x67/0x90 (8) Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: [<c0122d0b>] __tasklet_action+0xeb/0xf0 (48) Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: [<c01234f6>] ksoftirqd+0xf6/0x1a0 (24) Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: [<c0123400>] ksoftirqd+0x0/0x1a0 (48) Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: [<c01318bb>] kthread+0xab/0xe0 (4) Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: [<c0131810>] kthread+0x0/0xe0 (12) Sep 25 10:43:42 fairlight kernel: [<c0100e65>] kernel_thread_helper+0x5/0x10 (1 6) And also that (I had tons of that) : Sep 28 21:35:13 fairlight kernel: bug in rtc_read(): called in state S_IDLE! Sep 28 21:35:13 fairlight kernel: Read missed before next interrupt Sep 28 21:35:48 fairlight kernel: bug in rtc_read(): called in state S_IDLE! All this *seems* to have disappear, after three hours using the kernel. The rtc have stopped saying « eek » sometimes in the logs. Instead, I have tons of this kind of things : Sep 30 13:08:09 fairlight kernel: rtc: lost some interrupts at 1024Hz. Sep 30 13:08:31 fairlight last message repeated 1899 times Sep 30 13:09:01 fairlight kernel: 1024Hz. Sep 30 13:09:01 fairlight kernel: rtc: lost some interrupts at 1024Hz. Sep 30 13:09:16 fairlight last message repeated 1545 times [...] Sep 30 14:20:00 fairlight kernel: rtc: lost some interrupts at 1024Hz. Sep 30 14:20:31 fairlight last message repeated 2346 times Sep 30 14:21:32 fairlight last message repeated 3067 times Sep 30 14:21:54 fairlight last message repeated 1148 times IRQ balancing is activated, and the litlle redhat's software for that is installed and running. I have chosen to compile the enhanced rtc in module, and have disabled its graphs because it flooded my logs without any use for me. I have two questions : - Could someone tell me, more clearly than in the kernel help :), what's the use of this HPET beast ? - Does it matter to disable it for real time audio purposes ? Thanks in advance for any enlightenment. Cheers, Y. P.S. : /proc/interrupts : CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3 0: 3237178 3211763 3204014 3202106 IO-APIC [........N/ 0]-edge timer 6: 2 0 0 1 IO-APIC [........./ 1]-edge floppy 8: 0 0 0 0 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-edge rtc 9: 0 0 0 0 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-level acpi 14: 89780 107867 194304 1819 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-edge ide0 15: 31 0 1 1 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-edge ide1 16: 24128 57874 47830 32380 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-level libata 17: 27659 0 0 1 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-level eth0 18: 17715 30803 28025 12471 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-level ohci_hcd:usb1, ohci_hcd:usb2, ohci1394 19: 991430 1208684 744999 1458384 IO-APIC [........./ 0]-level hdsp NMI: 0 0 0 0 LOC: 18863126 17966846 18728772 17747659 ERR: 0 MIS: 0