[CentOS] Selecting a compatible motherboard

[Todd Cary]

Aleksandar -

I greatly appreciate your advice as well as the advice of others on this 
topic.  Though I understand the concepts of chip sets and motherboards, 
the specifics is not my forte; once I get a computer up and running as a 
server to handle my testing of php scripts and to provide a way for my 
client to FTP my work during the day, I just let it run :-) !

One of my servers (was my main one) has a board with Adaptec fake-RAID 
BIOS that works well with RH 9, but for the reasons you have stated, it 
does not work with RHE 4 - even if I use the 2 connectors that bypass 
the RAID.  So, I want to replace the motherboard with a middle of the 
road board (I think I have a Pentium 3 on the current board).

Thank you....

Todd

Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
> 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).
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