Re: LUG: Call 822858: trying to install linux - Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:25:35 -0500

Subject : Re: LUG: Call 822858: trying to install linux

From : "John Berninger" <johnw@berningeronline.[redacted]>

Date : Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:25:35 -0500

On Tue, November 15, 2005 1:12 pm, Dale Broadbent wrote:
> Here is my motherboard
> http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?CategoryID=1&TypeID=31&DetailID=493&MenuID=16&LanID=0
>
> The SATA on the motherboard I believe is powered by NVIDIA. At least I
> put the NVIDIA drivers on a floppy and used that during windows setup for
> SATA recognition. My older motherboard (Chaintech ZNF3-250) used the Sil
> 3114 SATA chipset.
>

Chipset: nVidia nForce4.

That's your biggest problem - the nVidia folks aren't forthcoming about
their chipset specs, so the nForce4 chipset doesn't play well with Linux.
I know RHEL/Fedora have problems, I believe most other distro's have
issues as well. Bleeding edge kernels from kernel.org may be better
behaved, but I don't know if even CVSHEAD will get you a useful kernel
with that mainboard. (I'm not saying it won't, I'm saying I simply don't
have any knowledge on it.)

The Silicon Image SATA chipset should be fine - Silicom Image is well
supported, although there's no guarantee you'll be able to use the
half-baked firmware RAID properly. You may have to disable the SATA
firmware RAID and use software RAID - it's just as fast, just as reliable,
just as manageable, but the firmware RAID changes the interface presented
to the driver ever so slightly, causing things to break horribly. If the
SATA chipset is nVidia, you may be hosed there as well, with the same
"kernel.org" caveats as above.

--
John

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Re: LUG: Call 822858: trying to install linux