Mohan Kumar M writes:

To overcome this problem, I have created the patch, which
checks for the condition if the machine is ppc970 based and maxcpus
kernel parameter is specified. If the condition is met, the default
distribution server is assigned to be current boot cpu instead of
assigning from the gserver#s property.

It feels hacky to be basing this sort of thing on the PVR.  I would
like to understand the real problem better.  Is it that we are
sometimes setting default_distrib_server to point to a CPU which is
not running?  If so, why and how?  Is this something that is specific
to the firmware on IBM 970-based blade systems?  Is there in fact a
firmware bug that this works around?  Why don't we see it on non-970
based systems?

Paul.