[CentOS] Selecting a compatible motherboard

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Sam Drinkard wrote:

> After 
> doing more research, I found that the SuperMicro boards do maintain a 
> compat list with various versions of Unix / Linux / RedHat.

I can also recommend SuperMicro boards.  They all worked well with Linux.

However, word of warning.  Couple of SuperMicro boards (for example 
P4SCT+) have Marvell SATA chipset with Adaptec's fake-RAID BIOS.  This 
chipset is not supported by Linux kernel.  You can download device 
driver from Abit web site and compile it, however this is not supported. 
  Abit's device driver also supports fake RAID feature of Marvell 
chipset.  There is some work being done to develop open source version 
of this driver.  This is relatively rare chipset, and it is uncertain 
when open source driver will be available.

The motherboards in question are developed for SuperMicro servers with 
four bays for SATA drives.  All of them also have Intel chipset that 
supports two SATA drives.  There is total of six SATA connectors on each 
of those motherboards (four connected to Marvell chip, and two connected 
to Intel chip).  Well, at least those that I'm aware of have two 
additonal Intel ports.  Linux can use two ports that are connected to 
Intel chip.

So, as long as you are OK that only two out of six SATA ports would work 
with Linux those motherboards are also good choice.  Sooner or later, 
there'll also be open source device driver that'll enable you to use the 
four ports connected to Marvell controller.  If you buy entire system 
from SuperMicro that has this motherboard, you'll have to move two 
cables from Marvell ports to Intel ports, and you won't be able to use 
third and fourth drive bay (unless you put additional SATA controller in 
PCI or PCI-X slot).