Clan x86
Technical (Development, Security, etc.) => Unix / Linux Discussion => Topic started by: Sidoh on October 08, 2007, 03:57:20 pm
-
If you intend to run Linux on your computer, stay away from this motherboard. It's a nightmare.
I've tried Ubuntu (Fiesty Fawn, Gusty Gibbon -- both the live CDs and the text installers), Ubuntu Studio, Fedora Core 7 and Slackware 12. With the exception of Slackware, they all fail to install or work shortly after installation. I'd prefer to have a slightly more shiny-out-of-the-box distribution for my workstation, meaning Slackware is pretty much a last resort.
I was pretty confused as to what was going on, but some reasoning and Googling led me to believe the motherboard is the culprit. I've updated to the most recent version of the BIOS that I can get (the newest one fails to download or be recognized using their utility) and it doesn't help at all.
I suppose I'll give Arch Linux another try (I had bad luck with it when I installed it on my server), but does anyone else have a recommendation? I suspect that Slackware will work, but I'd like to have something with a package manager on my workstation.
-
If you intend to run Linux on your computer, stay away from this motherboard. It's a nightmare.
I've tried Ubuntu (Fiesty Fawn, Gusty Gibbon -- both the live CDs and the text installers), Ubuntu Studio, Fedora Core 7 and Slackware 12. With the exception of Slackware, they all fail to install or work shortly after installation. I'd prefer to have a slightly more shiny-out-of-the-box distribution for my workstation, meaning Slackware is pretty much a last resort.
I was pretty confused as to what was going on, but some reasoning and Googling led me to believe the motherboard is the culprit. I've updated to the most recent version of the BIOS that I can get (the newest one fails to download or be recognized using their utility) and it doesn't help at all.
I suppose I'll give Arch Linux another try (I had bad luck with it when I installed it on my server), but does anyone else have a recommendation? I suspect that Slackware will work, but I'd like to have something with a package manager on my workstation.
Try NetBSD. Every time I've had a motherboard that hated me, NetBSD worked perfectly. For example, I have a generic slot 1 PIII motherboard, and it has some IRQ issues. Linux gave all kinds of errors, but NetBSD works without complaining at all.
pkgsrc can get most of your packages, maybe not as "Shiny", but it would work.
Try Debian too. It probably won't work if ubuntu doesn't want to either though
-
Try NetBSD. Every time I've had a motherboard that hated me, NetBSD worked perfectly. For example, I have a generic slot 1 PIII motherboard, and it has some IRQ issues. Linux gave all kinds of errors, but NetBSD works without complaining at all.
pkgsrc can get most of your packages, maybe not as "Shiny", but it would work.
Try Debian too. It probably won't work if ubuntu doesn't want to either though
I'd prefer to stick to something that I'm familiar with. If it comes to that point, though, I'll just use Slackware.
I didn't bother with Debian since none of the Ubuntu distributions I tried worked (and failed at the same point).
-
Somebody wrote a version of apt-get for Slackware. It's called slapt-get, iirc. I'm not a big fan of it, but if you really want a package-management tool, it might help you.
-
Somebody wrote a version of apt-get for Slackware. It's called slapt-get, iirc. I'm not a big fan of it, but if you really want a package-management tool, it might help you.
I thought that was intended to update the OS, not get packages, though.
-
I thought that was intended to update the OS, not get packages, though.
Oh, no. I use it to grab packages all the time. :D
-
Yeah, it does both.
-
Yeah, it does both.
Ah, that's cool. I suppose I can give it a go, then. I'd really prefer that Ubuntu/Fedora worked, though... :(
-
Hmm...it sounds like something is seriously wrong with your system - though it is possible and common that the version of Linux you're using has bugs. While I'm no fan of the aforementioned distributions, most of them come with everything compiled into the kernel and/or as modules. Care to provide us with the details of the kernel panic and/or problems after installation?
-
Hmm...it sounds like something is seriously wrong with your system - though it is possible and common that the version of Linux you're using has bugs. While I'm no fan of the aforementioned distributions, most of them come with everything compiled into the kernel and/or as modules. Care to provide us with the details of the kernel panic and/or problems after installation?
I don't think it's "defective" hardware in the sense that it isn't working like it was made to, but the people responsible certainly screwed something up.
Here are some links that describe the problems I had while installing:
http://www.michaellarabel.com/?k=blog&i=115
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=699&num=1
Edit --
Ubuntu Studio installs fine, but fails to boot all the way more than once. Things seemed to work better without any USB devices plugged in. When it dies (and it takes a while), I get this error:
/bin/sh can't access tty; job control turned off
I only got Ubuntu (FF or GG) to install once and it froze at the same point Ubuntu Studio did (surprise surprise). The other times, the Live CDs either die in the same fashion or don't detect my hard drive.
Fedora Core 7 never detected my hard drive.
As I mentioned, I didn't seem to have any problems with Slackware. Everything ran pretty smoothly, but I wasn't on it for long. It was mostly just a test.
I'm unsure, but I think they are all using kernel 2.6.20-16.
Edit -- I should also mention that the machine runs flawlessly on Windows XP.
-
That's really messed up. tty has very little to do with hardware (at least now-a-days).
tty is a device for teletype terminals...now-a-days they are usually emulated rather than actual terminals. Maybe there is a problem with BIOS I/O? Try updating your BIOS.
-
That's really messed up. tty has very little to do with hardware (at least now-a-days).
tty is a device for teletype terminals...now-a-days they are usually emulated rather than actual terminals. Maybe there is a problem with BIOS I/O? Try updating your BIOS.
Try reading the third paragraph of his first post.
-
That's really messed up. tty has very little to do with hardware (at least now-a-days).
tty is a device for teletype terminals...now-a-days they are usually emulated rather than actual terminals. Maybe there is a problem with BIOS I/O? Try updating your BIOS.
Try reading the third paragraph of his first post.
This post really doesn't help Sidoh. It doesn't really contribute anything at all and even smells a bit provocative. I read his post this morning and responded later this evening not remembering every detail.
Sidoh, you say some distributions don't detect the harddrive? You could also try tweaking the BIOS to turn off some special harddrive features. A friend of mine was trying to install XP (pre SP2) a couple weeks ago and it didn't detect his harddrive until he did that - I don't remember what it is he turned off.
-
That's really messed up. tty has very little to do with hardware (at least now-a-days).
tty is a device for teletype terminals...now-a-days they are usually emulated rather than actual terminals. Maybe there is a problem with BIOS I/O? Try updating your BIOS.
It wouldn't surprise me if it was something to do with the BIOS, but, unfortunately, I don't think I can update them anymore. There is one version higher than the current one I have, but, like I said, the utility won't allow me to download it (it says the stuff it downloads fails a checksum test every time). I've tried downloading the binaries over the web and then using the utility with that, but it yells at me about an invalid version or something.
Sidoh, you say some distributions don't detect the harddrive? You could also try tweaking the BIOS to turn off some special harddrive features. A friend of mine was trying to install XP (pre SP2) a couple weeks ago and it didn't detect his harddrive until he did that - I don't remember what it is he turned off.
Sure, I'll give that a go. Do you have any idea what they'd be called? I'll try poking around there later tonight. I need to barrel through this practice exam first, though.
Thanks for the tips. I'll try updating the BIOS again and tinkering around with some of the hard drive settings.
-
I tried to update my BIOS again. The client magically worked this time (I'm not sure I like that sort of flakiness in something that's messing with my BIOS...). I retried all of the previously mentioned distributions and they all failed again in the same areas.
However, I downloaded the daily release of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) and it seems to be working fine (other than some expected instabilities). My guess is the major difference is the kernel version (which is 2.6.22-9. I'm unsure which one 7.04 uses).
I'm still less than optimistic, but everything seems to be working much better than it has in the past.
-
I suggest a sacrifice to appease the Linux gods.
-
I'm unsure which one 7.04 uses).
2.6.20-16 is the current stable 7.04 kernel
-
2.6.20-16 is the current stable 7.04 kernel
Ah, okay. thanks.
So the same problem still pops up probably 1/3 times when I boot, but restarting seems to work. This is annoying, but at least now it's sort of working...
-
Holy crap. This motherboard is the jackpot of pain in the ass.
Here's a list of problems I encountered. I eventually found (hack-like) solutions to all the ones I've seen so far, but it still took me a full week, and one of my my Linux-savy friends' efforts for most of the day today to get it fully functioning.
- Problem: Inconsistent booting, devices not showing up, freezing on boot (the problems mentioned before).
- Solution: Booting with the "irqpoll" option, which is apparently some option that Linux kernel developers introduced to address a bug that they couldn't fix otherwise. I cropped this up to a problem with my motherboard, since it seemed to be (more directly) related to my hard disk controller.
- Problem: Nivida's proprietary drivers wouldn't function after a reboot. They partially worked (some graphics elements were screwy) before a reboot, but then I'd get some error saying there was an "API mismatch" between the kernel driver and my card.
- Solution: My friend was pretty well versed with the X config file, so he dove right into that. It was something about disabling some of the modules that the nvidia driver spat in there or something. We were going to write it up, but we didn't have a chance because we worked on other problems. It took him about an hour and a half to get both monitors working. However, when we rebooted, we'd still get the weird API error. He said he'd seen that before too and recalled there's some directory containing "volatile" kernel modules. I'm unsure how that works, but we ended up adding a line in rc.local that copied over the kernel module to that directory. It works fine now.
- Problem: After installing grub on the MBR, chain-loading Windows XP would not work. I'd get an error where it whined about ntoskrnl.exe being missing. Sheesh, you'd think it could do without it!
- Solution: We decided to try reinstalling the Windows boot loader onto the MBR, but my XP disk wouldn't boot for some reason (I just got a black screen after it booted into the installer). I decided that the only thing of significance that had changed since I last installed Windows (using exactly the same disk, in fact) was the BIOS. So, we found some utility that allowed you to make a bootable "DOS" CD from Linux with the BIOS flash exe and binary included. I reverted to the version that my motherboard came with, but this didn't work. We tried burning the CD from its ISO (I have a copy on my server), but that didn't work either. I ended up grabbing another version of XP I had handy and it booted fine into that...
In any case, though, this wasn't the problem. It ended up being the farking motherboard again. There's a weird option to give control of the keyboard/mouse either to the BIOS or to the OS. In order to interact with anything at or before the boot loader using a USB device, you have to specify "BIOS." However, I found some post on google saying that this was problematic for this specific situation for some unknown reason. So, I changed XP to the default entry in grub, changed the BIOS setting to "OS" and let it run. It booted fine. I now have a PS/2 keyboard plugged in behind my keyboard so I can change which OS I want when I'm booting.
In summary, don't get this motherboard if you want to install Linux. I've read from countless sources that it's a "Linux Lemon."