Here is what I've ordered for the new system:
Case: Antec TX1050B, Mid-Tower Server Case
MoBo: Intel D945GCL
CPU: Intel Pentium-4 631
RAM: Aeneon 512 Mb 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMM - DDR2 667
Disk: Hitachi 80 Gb SATA 3G
Carrier: Vantec MRK-200ST-BK
DVD: got one on the shelf I'm going to try
Floppy: Sony MPF920-Z-121
My intention is to load CentOS-4 complete and use the system as a development/backup box.
Any sanity checking would be most appreciated. :-)
Charles L. Sliger, Information Systems Engineer, chaz@bctonline.com
"No matter where you go, there you are..."
Any sanity checking would be most appreciated. J
What exactly is the task of this box? If it's a mission critical oracle DB server, then you might want to re-evaluate your medications. If it's a home webserver you'll be okay.
As for sanity..... Floppy: Sony MPF920-Z-121 ? wtf?
Other than a bios upgrade, when was the last time you looked at a floppy?
Jim Perrin wrote:
Any sanity checking would be most appreciated. J
What exactly is the task of this box?
He said, My intention is to load CentOS-4 complete and use the system as a development/backup box.
If it's a mission critical oracle DB server, then you might want to re-evaluate your medications. If it's a home webserver you'll be okay.
As for sanity..... Floppy: Sony MPF920-Z-121 ? wtf?
Other than a bios upgrade, when was the last time you looked at a floppy?
If I need a floppy for that, I usually burn it to CD. But I was looking for one a few weeks ago.
John Summerfield wrote:
Jim Perrin wrote:
Any sanity checking would be most appreciated. J
What exactly is the task of this box?
He said, My intention is to load CentOS-4 complete and use the system as a development/backup box.
If it's a mission critical oracle DB server, then you might want to re-evaluate your medications. If it's a home webserver you'll be okay.
As for sanity..... Floppy: Sony MPF920-Z-121 ? wtf?
Other than a bios upgrade, when was the last time you looked at a floppy?
If I need a floppy for that, I usually burn it to CD. But I was looking for one a few weeks ago.
Exactly John - data i have collected from personal experience; How long my machines have each had a floppy drive (in the past) : ~12y Number of times i've needed on: ~12
How long my new machines have all been floppy-less: ~5 weeks Number of times i've needed one since then: 4
Damn the irony!
MrKiwi
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:44:07 +1300, MrKiwi wrote:
John Summerfield wrote:
Jim Perrin wrote:
As for sanity..... Floppy: Sony MPF920-Z-121 ? wtf?
Other than a bios upgrade, when was the last time you looked at a floppy?
If I need a floppy for that, I usually burn it to CD. But I was looking for one a few weeks ago.
Exactly John - data i have collected from personal experience; How long my machines have each had a floppy drive (in the past) : ~12y Number of times i've needed on: ~12
How long my new machines have all been floppy-less: ~5 weeks Number of times i've needed one since then: 4
Floppy conversation on the Linux kernel mailing list:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/6/138
Akemi
Charles Sliger wrote:
Here is what I've ordered for the new system:
Case: Antec TX1050B, Mid-Tower Server Case
MoBo: Intel D945GCL
CPU: Intel Pentium-4 631
RAM: Aeneon 512 Mb 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMM - DDR2 667
Disk: Hitachi 80 Gb SATA 3G
Carrier: Vantec MRK-200ST-BK
DVD: got one on the shelf I'm going to try
Floppy: Sony MPF920-Z-121
My intention is to load CentOS-4 complete and use the system as a development/backup box.
Any sanity checking would be most appreciated. :-)
Personally, I'm not a great fan of Intel's mobos: the idea one would never need more than 512 Mbytes of RAM for a Pentium III never seemed right, and I regularly have problems with the intel Graphics: RHEL5 beta was nogo on a Dell GC270 (three years or so old) for that reason. It could be made to work, but it required fiddling, and was completely broken for FC6.
I generally prefer Asus motherboards, I quite like Via chips and SIS works well too (but it is low-spec).
If you have any thoughts of Xen, you should look for a mobo capable of at least 4 Gbytes: you don't have to populate it all now, but you will need room to grow. Also, check that virtualisation is supported. You would need it for Windows or other fully-native operating systems, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if some geek decides it's a wonderful way to improve process separation.
I generally prefer Asus motherboards, I quite like Via chips and SIS works well too (but it is low-spec).
I will give Asus second thoughts because their BIOS sucks, I will never ever touch a VIA board again (I have a socket A VIA board for my home machine) and I wish there were more SIS boards.
Feizhou wrote:
I generally prefer Asus motherboards, I quite like Via chips and SIS works well too (but it is low-spec).
I will give Asus second thoughts because their BIOS sucks, I will never
Specifically, what's wrong with the BIOS?
ever touch a VIA board again (I have a socket A VIA board for my home
One bad VIA experience?
machine) and I wish there were more SIS boards.
John Summerfield wrote:
Feizhou wrote:
I generally prefer Asus motherboards, I quite like Via chips and SIS works well too (but it is low-spec).
I will give Asus second thoughts because their BIOS sucks, I will never
Specifically, what's wrong with the BIOS?
APIC tables or ACPI issues. I have seen many reports of needing kernel parameters to get stability on various Asus boards that are apic or acpi related besides having first hand experience with one particular board.
ever touch a VIA board again (I have a socket A VIA board for my home
One bad VIA experience?
FYI, the linux kernel developers have code specifically just for 'Via Quirks' which are reverse-engineered from what I see on LKML. If you like to trust VIA's mucking about with the PCI bus or what not to get some 'short cuts' without releasing data about this behaviour then be my guest.
Feizhou wrote:
John Summerfield wrote:
Feizhou wrote:
I generally prefer Asus motherboards, I quite like Via chips and SIS works well too (but it is low-spec).
I will give Asus second thoughts because their BIOS sucks, I will never
Specifically, what's wrong with the BIOS?
APIC tables or ACPI issues. I have seen many reports of needing kernel parameters to get stability on various Asus boards that are apic or acpi related besides having first hand experience with one particular board.
As I recall, ASUS uses a variety of BIOSes. I'm typing from one that has a Phoenix, and another here has an AMI BIOS.
One has PCI quirks, the other doesn't. How serious they are, I don't know, but it works well.
ever touch a VIA board again (I have a socket A VIA board for my home
One bad VIA experience?
FYI, the linux kernel developers have code specifically just for 'Via Quirks' which are reverse-engineered from what I see on LKML. If you like to trust VIA's mucking about with the PCI bus or what not to get some 'short cuts' without releasing data about this behaviour then be my guest.
There seems to be special "quirks" code for several chipsets. The several computers I've owned that use Via chips all work. I've also heard good reports of their 17cm square cards, some with embedded Via CPUs.
Neither your experiences nor mine mean a lot; mine have been good and when I'm buying my next mobo it will probably be Asus.
As I recall, ASUS uses a variety of BIOSes. I'm typing from one that has a Phoenix, and another here has an AMI BIOS.
One has PCI quirks, the other doesn't. How serious they are, I don't know, but it works well.
Like I said, passing kernel parameters to deal with whatever funny thing the BIOS does usually fixes the stability issues. I, however, feel more comfortable if it installs and runs without any special handling.
One bad VIA experience?
FYI, the linux kernel developers have code specifically just for 'Via Quirks' which are reverse-engineered from what I see on LKML. If you like to trust VIA's mucking about with the PCI bus or what not to get some 'short cuts' without releasing data about this behaviour then be my guest.
There seems to be special "quirks" code for several chipsets. The several computers I've owned that use Via chips all work. I've also heard good reports of their 17cm square cards, some with embedded Via CPUs.
Until you need low latency or until you push the board real hard.
Neither your experiences nor mine mean a lot; mine have been good and when I'm buying my next mobo it will probably be Asus.
/me shrugs. Asus has a very good name in Hong Kong. It's with my latest Asus board desktop server that I was made to think back to all the Asus boards I have since socket 7 where i have had to update BIOSes that I realized that I have been following the crowd with respect to Asus.
Feizhou feizhou@graffiti.net wrote: John Summerfield wrote:
Feizhou wrote:
I generally prefer Asus motherboards, I quite like Via chips and SIS works well too (but it is low-spec).
I will give Asus second thoughts because their BIOS sucks, I will never
Specifically, what's wrong with the BIOS?
APIC tables or ACPI issues. I have seen many reports of needing kernel parameters to get stability on various Asus boards that are apic or acpi related besides having first hand experience with one particular board.
ever touch a VIA board again (I have a socket A VIA board for my home
One bad VIA experience?
FYI, the linux kernel developers have code specifically just for 'Via Quirks' which are reverse-engineered from what I see on LKML. If you like to trust VIA's mucking about with the PCI bus or what not to get some 'short cuts' without releasing data about this behaviour then be my guest. _______________________________________________ Hum...
I have a VIA motherboard, an ABIT KT7A and the ACPI works fine with Centos 4.1. I did have some screen saver issuses at first but got around them by using xscreensaver.
No problems powering down the machine at shutdown.
All PCI devies work fine.
I have a VIA motherboard, an ABIT KT7A and the ACPI works fine with Centos 4.1. I did have some screen saver issuses at first but got around them by using xscreensaver.
You have not tried to get low latency sensitive cards to work like Pinnacle's PCTV card to work.
I also do not have any issues with my VIA box doing anything that is not latency sensitive.
I have also managed some VIA chipset server boards from Tyan and they were a pain in the neck and kept crashing from time to time under Linux. The only time they were stable was when FreeBSD 4.x was running on them but then that is because FreeBSD 4.x does not push the hardware as hard as Linux and therefore slower than Linux in performance.
Besides, the ACPI issues were with Asus bioses. I heard of an A-bit board for AMD Athlon64 cpus that did not require any fancy kernel parameter to get stability so I think I will go for A-bit boards without VIA chipsets from now on.
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
(Yeah, I know they're cheap, but my budget is EXTREMELY limited for home machines. I just got an ECS NFORCE4M-A with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800MHz and 2Gb of 800 MHz OCZ memory, plus a geFORCE 7100ds video board cuz the ECS doesn't have an AGP slop for my aging current video card. Comments welcome.)
Thanks - reply directly if you don't think this belongs here.
mhr
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
(Yeah, I know they're cheap, but my budget is EXTREMELY limited for home machines. I just got an ECS NFORCE4M-A with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800MHz and 2Gb of 800 MHz OCZ memory, plus a geFORCE 7100ds video board cuz the ECS doesn't have an AGP slop for my aging current video card. Comments welcome.)
Sounds like you're committed now. The time to ask was before; now your best guage is experience. If you haven't installed yet, test with a live distro (is there a CentOS Live? I think there is). Knoppix is good, any of the ubuntu versions & releases comes as a pair of images/CDs, one is an installable live system, the other the more tradidional text-mode install cd.
Thanks - reply directly if you don't think this belongs here.
It's good to stay here for sanity checking/debating the point and for those who might find it in the archive. It's annoying to google a problem, find the question and no answer.
John Summerfield spake the following on 3/14/2007 3:24 PM:
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
(Yeah, I know they're cheap, but my budget is EXTREMELY limited for home machines. I just got an ECS NFORCE4M-A with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800MHz and 2Gb of 800 MHz OCZ memory, plus a geFORCE 7100ds video board cuz the ECS doesn't have an AGP slop for my aging current video card. Comments welcome.)
Sounds like you're committed now. The time to ask was before; now your best guage is experience. If you haven't installed yet, test with a live distro (is there a CentOS Live? I think there is). Knoppix is good, any of the ubuntu versions & releases comes as a pair of images/CDs, one is an installable live system, the other the more tradidional text-mode install cd.
Thanks - reply directly if you don't think this belongs here.
It's good to stay here for sanity checking/debating the point and for those who might find it in the archive. It's annoying to google a problem, find the question and no answer.
The centos live CD would be the best test, as the other live cd's probably have a much newer kernel and better hardware support.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Scott Silva Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:11 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Re: New System Build
The centos live CD would be the best test, as the other live cd's
probably
have a much newer kernel and better hardware support.
Dumb/newbie question - which is the "live CD" and where might I find it? I just looked on a mirror and saw the 4 CDs, the server CD and the DVD bittorrent (which I already have) - what am I looking for here?
Thanks.
Mark Hull-Richter spake the following on 3/14/2007 4:31 PM:
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Scott Silva Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:11 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Re: New System Build
The centos live CD would be the best test, as the other live cd's
probably
have a much newer kernel and better hardware support.
Dumb/newbie question - which is the "live CD" and where might I find it? I just looked on a mirror and saw the 4 CDs, the server CD and the DVD bittorrent (which I already have) - what am I looking for here?
Thanks.
http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=141 gives some detail, the download should be under the centos/4.4/isos/i386/ directory of your mirror.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Scott Silva Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:44 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Re: New System Build
http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=141 gives some detail, the download should be under the centos/4.4/isos/i386/ directory of
your
mirror.
Is there a 64-bit version? I've got an Athlon 64 X2....
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Scott Silva Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:44 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Re: New System Build
http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=141 gives some detail, the download should be under the centos/4.4/isos/i386/ directory of
your
mirror.
Is there a 64-bit version? I've got an Athlon 64 X2....
Thunderbird and I are confused about threading & context. What do you want the live CD for? if you don't want to install from it, then it should be fine - AMD-64 hardware runs IA32 very well.
Scott Silva wrote:
John Summerfield spake the following on 3/14/2007 3:24 PM:
The centos live CD would be the best test, as the other live cd's probably have a much newer kernel and better hardware support.
Ah.
There's always tor soon-to-arrive CentOS 5 to address those concerns.
The IA32 live CD is fine, but not a perfect test, but any problems _should_ be addressed in C5.
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
(Yeah, I know they're cheap, but my budget is EXTREMELY limited for home machines. I just got an ECS NFORCE4M-A with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800MHz and 2Gb of 800 MHz OCZ memory, plus a geFORCE 7100ds video board cuz the ECS doesn't have an AGP slop for my aging current video card. Comments welcome.)
Thanks - reply directly if you don't think this belongs here.
mhr
I usually encourage people to stay away from ECS due to the high incidence of DOA and generally poor support for Linux. You're probably going to run into problems running this board with Linux from looking at the reviews of it on NewEgg.com.
If you get the board up and running, I would try to test it thoroughly before you're outside of your return window. Better motherboards are available for only slightly more money (about $20); it may be worth trying to return it if possible.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of nethub@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:11 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] New System Build
I usually encourage people to stay away from ECS due to the high incidence of DOA and generally poor support for Linux. You're
probably
going to run into problems running this board with Linux from looking
at
the reviews of it on NewEgg.com.
I saw one good and one bad. Looks like it's catch as catch can....
I've had pretty good luck with the ECS boards I've bought. The only sticky problem I had was with some cheap memory I bought in tandem with one about three years ago. Of course, this will be the first time I've tried Linux on one, but the bad review said it just needed the APIC disabled, so I'll see how it works and let everyone know.
If you get the board up and running, I would try to test it thoroughly before you're outside of your return window. Better motherboards are available for only slightly more money (about $20); it may be worth trying to return it if possible.
I plan to test it as thoroughly as I know how - can you (or anyone here) recommend any good benchmarks that would exercise the system?
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
I strongly recommend staying away from ASRock boards.
I recently had an MB die. The only replacement I could afford that was available quickly was an ASRock. I bought it and have been suffering ever since.
My old board had 3 parallel IDE devices. The new board can only support 2. OK. This is not special to ASRock. But ....
I got 2 new SATA drives to go with it. I thought I would set them up in a RAID configuration. Was I wrong.
This MB apparently has some special BIOS code that only works with M$ software. There is NO Linux support for it. I found other references to this on the net.
ASRock support simply replied to use the Nvidia drives from the Nvidia site. Well they didn't solve the BIOS problem. ASRock did not reply when I re-asked for their help.
CentOS 4 will not recognize these drives.
I am now using FC6 and booting with NODMRAID. By doing this I was finally able to use booth drives. If I don't use NODMRAID, I get device mapping and everything is fine until I reboot - there is that BIOS problem again.
On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 11:01 +0800, Mel wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
I strongly recommend staying away from ASRock boards.
I recently had an MB die. The only replacement I could afford that was available quickly was an ASRock. I bought it and have been suffering ever since.
My daughter's system running FC6 on an ASRock P4i65G (intel 865G chipset based) works fine ... onboard sound, video, networking, IDE & SATA. I've been happy with their Intel chipset boards in the past.
My old board had 3 parallel IDE devices. The new board can only support 2. OK. This is not special to ASRock. But ....
I got 2 new SATA drives to go with it. I thought I would set them up in a RAID configuration. Was I wrong.
This MB apparently has some special BIOS code that only works with M$ software. There is NO Linux support for it. I found other references to this on the net.
ASRock support simply replied to use the Nvidia drives from the Nvidia site. Well they didn't solve the BIOS problem. ASRock did not reply when I re-asked for their help.
CentOS 4 will not recognize these drives.
I am now using FC6 and booting with NODMRAID. By doing this I was finally able to use booth drives. If I don't use NODMRAID, I get device mapping and everything is fine until I reboot - there is that BIOS problem again.
The motherboard almost certainly uses "Fake Raid" and other than initially booting the OS is pretty dim. This is the same as 99.9% of all other desktop boards that advertize having RAID. The only boards you see "Real RAID" are high-end workstation boards and server boards. I would not fault ASRock for this.
See http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html
It comes down to doing research as to what hardware is supported in your distrobution of choice before buying the hardware. If you are using a fairly cutting edge distro like Fedora, OpenSuSE or Ubutu and the chipset is at least a year or so old your probably OK, but if you want the latest wizz-bang chipset your probably not going to be happy trying to install linux on it.
My personal preference is usually Gigabyte & ASRock for budget boards and Tyan & ASUS for mid to upper range desktop boards.
Regards, Paul Berger
I don't want to start an argument of anykind, but I've been using DFI motherboards for years. I've also had good luck with MSI, and Gigabyte boards too. I'll admit, the DFI boards can be pricey, but they are reliable. That's just my 2 cents worth.
Jim On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 23:00 -0500, Paul wrote:
On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 11:01 +0800, Mel wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
I strongly recommend staying away from ASRock boards.
I recently had an MB die. The only replacement I could afford that was available quickly was an ASRock. I bought it and have been suffering ever since.
My daughter's system running FC6 on an ASRock P4i65G (intel 865G chipset based) works fine ... onboard sound, video, networking, IDE & SATA. I've been happy with their Intel chipset boards in the past.
My old board had 3 parallel IDE devices. The new board can only support 2. OK. This is not special to ASRock. But ....
I got 2 new SATA drives to go with it. I thought I would set them up in a RAID configuration. Was I wrong.
This MB apparently has some special BIOS code that only works with M$ software. There is NO Linux support for it. I found other references to this on the net.
ASRock support simply replied to use the Nvidia drives from the Nvidia site. Well they didn't solve the BIOS problem. ASRock did not reply when I re-asked for their help.
CentOS 4 will not recognize these drives.
I am now using FC6 and booting with NODMRAID. By doing this I was finally able to use booth drives. If I don't use NODMRAID, I get device mapping and everything is fine until I reboot - there is that BIOS problem again.
The motherboard almost certainly uses "Fake Raid" and other than initially booting the OS is pretty dim. This is the same as 99.9% of all other desktop boards that advertize having RAID. The only boards you see "Real RAID" are high-end workstation boards and server boards. I would not fault ASRock for this.
See http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html
It comes down to doing research as to what hardware is supported in your distrobution of choice before buying the hardware. If you are using a fairly cutting edge distro like Fedora, OpenSuSE or Ubutu and the chipset is at least a year or so old your probably OK, but if you want the latest wizz-bang chipset your probably not going to be happy trying to install linux on it.
My personal preference is usually Gigabyte & ASRock for budget boards and Tyan & ASUS for mid to upper range desktop boards.
Regards, Paul Berger
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Jimmy Bradley spake the following on 3/14/2007 9:08 PM:
I don't want to start an argument of anykind, but I've been usingDFI motherboards for years. I've also had good luck with MSI, and Gigabyte boards too. I'll admit, the DFI boards can be pricey, but they are reliable. That's just my 2 cents worth.
Jim
I have also used MSI for years, but their quality has gone way down in the last one to one and a half years, and their bios's seem more and more flakey. DFI has actually improved quite a bit.
Paul wrote:
My daughter's system running FC6 on an ASRock P4i65G (intel 865G chipset based) works fine ... onboard sound, video, networking, IDE & SATA. I've been happy with their Intel chipset boards in the past.
My MB (AM2NF6G-VSTA) is Nvidia based. I went with this because the system was down and I needed to get it back up quickly. I went with my local dealer's recommendation.
The motherboard almost certainly uses "Fake Raid" and other than initially booting the OS is pretty dim
Amen
distrobution of choice before buying the hardware. If you are using a fairly cutting edge distro like Fedora, OpenSuSE or Ubutu and the chipset is at least a year or so old your probably OK, but if you want the latest wizz-bang chipset your probably not going to be happy trying to install linux on it.
I don't want bleeding edge - I want stability. I would like to change all my systems to CentOS but I have to wait until I can get it to recognize these drives. CentOS 4 will not see the drives and sata_nv is loaded. (The stat_nv driver direct from Nvidia makes no difference.)I am waiting patiently (OK not so patiently) for CentOS 5. I will then go to a stable system. My problem is that my local store carries mainly M$ stuff. They don't have a market for Linux stuff yet.
What affects my decision on ASRock the most was their lack of support. Simply saying use the Nvidia driver and then not replying to my last email is not good customer service.
Thanks for the link.
Paul wrote:
I recently had an MB die. The only replacement I could afford that was available quickly was an ASRock. I bought it and have been suffering ever since.
Probably the problem is a function of the particular chipset; it could arise with other brands.
No justification for poor support or bad manners though.
My daughter's system running FC6 on an ASRock P4i65G (intel 865G chipset based) works fine ... onboard sound, video, networking, IDE & SATA. I've been happy with their Intel chipset boards in the past.
My old board had 3 parallel IDE devices. The new board can only support 2. OK. This is not special to ASRock. But ....
I got 2 new SATA drives to go with it. I thought I would set them up in a RAID configuration. Was I wrong.
This MB apparently has some special BIOS code that only works with M$ software. There is NO Linux support for it. I found other references to this on the net.
ASRock support simply replied to use the Nvidia drives from the Nvidia site. Well they didn't solve the BIOS problem. ASRock did not reply when I re-asked for their help.
CentOS 4 will not recognize these drives.
I am now using FC6 and booting with NODMRAID. By doing this I was finally able to use booth drives. If I don't use NODMRAID, I get device mapping and everything is fine until I reboot - there is that BIOS problem again.
The motherboard almost certainly uses "Fake Raid" and other than initially booting the OS is pretty dim. This is the same as 99.9% of
There's no need to be so disparaging. You want cheap RAID, you get software RAID in the BIOS.
Personally, I'd rather do the RAID in my Linux box where I can control it better:-)
My personal preference is usually Gigabyte & ASRock for budget boards and Tyan & ASUS for mid to upper range desktop boards.
I've found Gigabyte's support a bit off; "gotta have windows" to flash the BIOS. This might not be a problem with more recent boards, but I've been bitten, and I'm happy with alternatives.
On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 05:50:50AM +0900, John Summerfield wrote:
Paul wrote:
I recently had an MB die. The only replacement I could afford that was available quickly was an ASRock. I bought it and have been suffering ever since.
Probably the problem is a function of the particular chipset; it could arise with other brands.
No justification for poor support or bad manners though.
My daughter's system running FC6 on an ASRock P4i65G (intel 865G chipset based) works fine ... onboard sound, video, networking, IDE & SATA. I've been happy with their Intel chipset boards in the past.
My old board had 3 parallel IDE devices. The new board can only support 2. OK. This is not special to ASRock. But ....
I got 2 new SATA drives to go with it. I thought I would set them up in a RAID configuration. Was I wrong.
This MB apparently has some special BIOS code that only works with M$ software. There is NO Linux support for it. I found other references to this on the net.
ASRock support simply replied to use the Nvidia drives from the Nvidia site. Well they didn't solve the BIOS problem. ASRock did not reply when I re-asked for their help.
CentOS 4 will not recognize these drives.
I am now using FC6 and booting with NODMRAID. By doing this I was finally able to use booth drives. If I don't use NODMRAID, I get device mapping and everything is fine until I reboot - there is that BIOS problem again.
The motherboard almost certainly uses "Fake Raid" and other than initially booting the OS is pretty dim. This is the same as 99.9% of
There's no need to be so disparaging. You want cheap RAID, you get software RAID in the BIOS.
Personally, I'd rather do the RAID in my Linux box where I can control it better:-)
My personal preference is usually Gigabyte & ASRock for budget boards and Tyan & ASUS for mid to upper range desktop boards.
I've found Gigabyte's support a bit off; "gotta have windows" to flash the BIOS. This might not be a problem with more recent boards, but I've been bitten, and I'm happy with alternatives.
FWIW, my Gigabyte board (3 years old now) has the BIOS flasher built into the BIOS, so all you need is a FAT floppy with the file on it.
Mel spake the following on 3/14/2007 8:01 PM:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
I strongly recommend staying away from ASRock boards.
I recently had an MB die. The only replacement I could afford that was available quickly was an ASRock. I bought it and have been suffering ever since.
My old board had 3 parallel IDE devices. The new board can only support 2. OK. This is not special to ASRock. But ....
I got 2 new SATA drives to go with it. I thought I would set them up in a RAID configuration. Was I wrong.
This MB apparently has some special BIOS code that only works with M$ software. There is NO Linux support for it. I found other references to this on the net.
That is true of most on-board raid controllers. They aren't true raid. You can't expect to get a true hardware raid as an "addon".
ASRock support simply replied to use the Nvidia drives from the Nvidia site. Well they didn't solve the BIOS problem. ASRock did not reply when I re-asked for their help.
CentOS 4 will not recognize these drives.
I am now using FC6 and booting with NODMRAID. By doing this I was finally able to use booth drives. If I don't use NODMRAID, I get device mapping and everything is fine until I reboot - there is that BIOS problem again.
Asrock is a low end board maker. If you want reliable, you have to spend a little.
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
In my experience Elitegroup aka ECS are only slightly better than PC Chips, which are absolutely the worst.
now, this doesn't mean that every board these guys make is bad, its quite possible you could get a decent reasonably reliable system from them, but the odds are probably against that.
for that matter, even the best manufacturers have had some flakey boards and designs. My most reliable homebrew systems have been built around Intel branded motherboards, yet anything in the early P4 days using RDRAM was inherently problematic (i850, etc), even worse were any of the Intel RDRAM chipsets that had the SDRAM bridges (i810 etc)
of course, with CentOS 4 and earlier, many of the newest chipsets will have problems with driver support for the onboard peripherals.
John R Pierce wrote:
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
In my experience Elitegroup aka ECS are only slightly better than PC Chips, which are absolutely the worst.
now, this doesn't mean that every board these guys make is bad, its quite possible you could get a decent reasonably reliable system from them, but the odds are probably against that.
This is where I jump in and confirm that ECS is a scam and a disaster. There are a few models that seem to work well, but most ECS is just plain junk. I've owned and sold a few ECS products and will avoid them like I avoid ViewSonic LCD's in the future.
for that matter, even the best manufacturers have had some flakey boards and designs. My most reliable homebrew systems have been built around Intel branded motherboards, yet anything in the early P4 days using RDRAM was inherently problematic (i850, etc), even worse were any of the Intel RDRAM chipsets that had the SDRAM bridges (i810 etc)
of course, with CentOS 4 and earlier, many of the newest chipsets will have problems with driver support for the onboard peripherals. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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John R Pierce wrote:
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
Slightly OT, but what are the best boards for CentOS (if any) and how do ECS boards stack up?
In my experience Elitegroup aka ECS are only slightly better than PC Chips, which are absolutely the worst.
I don't often resort to such terms, but around here they're known as "PC Shit."
That said, I have one that works - I was in a hurry for a system, I asked for one to be built and neglected to discuss brand. Worse, the dealer was a Richard.
fwiw it's based on SiS chips.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of John Summerfield Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 1:56 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] New System Build
That said, I have one that works - I was in a hurry for a system, I asked for one to be built and neglected to discuss brand. Worse, the dealer was a Richard.
fwiw it's based on SiS chips.
How do boards based on nVidia's nForce4 chipset do (that's what the ECS board is)? Are there others that work well with Linux?
I'm installing the new board tonight and will be attempting to put (ultimately) CentOS 4.4 plus x86_64 on it (assuming I can get the DSL configuration right).
How do boards based on nVidia's nForce4 chipset do (that's what the ECS board is)? Are there others that work well with Linux?
Nforce4 chipsets are to be preferred over VIA. VIA tend to come with surprises.
There was a post where I ask about boards for AMD processors. There is a guy that runs A-bit KN9 without issues.
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2006-October/071253.html http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2006-October/071266.html
On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 11:18:46 +0800, Feizhou wrote:
How do boards based on nVidia's nForce4 chipset do (that's what the ECS board is)? Are there others that work well with Linux?
Nforce4 chipsets are to be preferred over VIA. VIA tend to come with surprises.
I second this. I have some bad experience with VIA and hear the same from others.
Akemi
Feizhou spake the following on 3/13/2007 7:59 PM:
I generally prefer Asus motherboards, I quite like Via chips and SIS works well too (but it is low-spec).
I will give Asus second thoughts because their BIOS sucks, I will never ever touch a VIA board again (I have a socket A VIA board for my home machine) and I wish there were more SIS boards.
I seem to see less complaints from the Tyan server boards, but they can be pricey. Most server boards seem more compatible with linux than the new desktop boards, but they usually have less than stellar graphics, since most servers need very little in that area.
On Tue, 2007-03-13 at 17:16 -0700, Charles Sliger wrote:
Here is what I’ve ordered for the new system:
You'll be fine with that. Depends upon what you mean by development though. If you mean software development, even just developing webpages, I recommend a little more than 512MB ram.
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