Advice asked: linux / nForce2 problems

[Chris]

Hi all,

I'm getting a bit desperate about the following problem, hopefully
someone could point me into the right direction:

I'm not a computer hardware expert, but I usually am capable enough to
build my own PC with the components I prefer. Friday last week I
bought new components for my PC. My system is dual bootable
(win2000/mandrake 9.2). In my new setup linux seems to give problems
with my HDD. It freezes with partitioning/formatting. The particular
HDD gives no problems with my old PC. While starting up the computer,
I noticed my extra Promise UDMA133 controller usues the same IRQ
(IRQ11) as the USB controller *and* display controller. IMO this seems
like conflicting hardware. However, I installed win2k at another 80GB
Maxtor HDD with the very same Promise controller without any problems.
I tried to reserve IRQ11 in the BIOS, but when I do this the PC
assigns all above mentioned devices to IRQ5. I tried the Promise card
in another PCI slot without results.

As I said before, in my old PC this HDD performs well, linux installs
just fine. However, when I do this and move the HDD to my new PC, it
will boot linux eventually, but it will crash at a moment for certain.

I removed the Promise UDMA133 controller and used only the onboard
UDMA133 controller. Partitioned and formatted the linux HDD and now
linux would even install correctly, but after some time it will freeze
and ruin the user account permanently.

My old system: 230W noname PSU / Asus P2B-F (BX) / 1GHz Celeron
(Cu-mine) / 512MB PC100 / 3x Maxtor 80GB / GeForce2 / Promise UDMA133
/ onboard DMA33 / DVD-ROM / DVD-RW / FDD. DVD players at the onboard
controller, 2x win HDD at Promise IDE1, 1x linux HDD at Promise IDE2.

New system: 350W Aopen PSU / Asus A7N8X-X (nForce2) / Athlon 2500 /
512MB PC3200 / 3x Maxtor 80GB / GeForce2 / Promise UDMA133 / onboard
UDMA133 / DVD-ROM / DVD-RW / FDD.

I'm a bit lost now. I was thinking that linux gives problems for some
reason with the nForce 2 chipset, since win2k installs and runs
without any problems. Could this be? Has anyone compareble
experiences? If so, how were these problems solved? Is it a Mandrake
specific problem? For the time being I didn't try another distro,
although both Mandrake 9.1 and 9.2 gave the same errors :-( All
feedback is highly appreciated!

Regards,
Chris

 

[Will Dormann]

New system: 350W Aopen PSU / Asus A7N8X-X (nForce2) / Athlon 2500 /
512MB PC3200 / 3x Maxtor 80GB / GeForce2 / Promise UDMA133 / onboard
UDMA133 / DVD-ROM / DVD-RW / FDD.

I'm a bit lost now. I was thinking that linux gives problems for some
reason with the nForce 2 chipset, since win2k installs and runs
without any problems. Could this be?

Yes, if you have APIC enabled. Common problem with Nforce2 and Linux.
Disabling it in the BIOS should be sufficient.


-WD

 

[wish]

Yes, if you have APIC enabled. Common problem with Nforce2 and Linux.
Disabling it in the BIOS should be sufficient.


-WD

Thanks for the quick reaction. I just did so, as well as flashing the BIOS to the newst version
(1007), unfortunately without the desired result :-(

Regards,
Chris

 

[Will Dormann]

Thanks for the quick reaction. I just did so, as well as flashing the BIOS to the newst version
(1007), unfortunately without the desired result :-(

Not sure. It might be that you need a kernel with the APIC feature
disabled? Now that APIC is disabled in your BIOS, does dmesg show
any reference to APIC?


-WD

 

[cleurs]

Not sure. It might be that you need a kernel with the APIC feature
disabled? Now that APIC is disabled in your BIOS, does dmesg show
any reference to APIC?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds logical. But to my understanding, to recompile a kernel,
one needs to have one first. That's where it already goes wrong. My linux system just froze instantly
and now I start from the beginning again: how to install linux from an iso-CD without lock-ups during
HDD partitioning :-(

Am I the only one facing these problems? Or do linux users simply ignore nForce2 mainboards?

Regards,
Chris

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (9 Feb 2004 02:33:23 -0800) it happened (e-mail address removed) (Chris)
wrote in <[email protected]>:

I'm a bit lost now. I was thinking that linux gives problems for some

reason with the nForce 2 chipset, since win2k installs and runs
without any problems. Could this be? Has anyone compareble
experiences? If so, how were these problems solved? Is it a Mandrake
specific problem? For the time being I didn't try another distro,
although both Mandrake 9.1 and 9.2 gave the same errors :-( All
feedback is highly appreciated!

Regards,
Chris

Check your memory
Run a fulll memory test in BIOS if available, or some test program.

 

[cleurs]

On a sunny day (9 Feb 2004 02:33:23 -0800) it happened (e-mail address removed) (Chris)
wrote in <[email protected]>:

I'm a bit lost now. I was thinking that linux gives problems for some
Check your memory
Run a fulll memory test in BIOS if available, or some test program.

Thanks. FWIW I thought PC3200 by Kingston would be a good choice, so that's what I bought.
Since win runs just fine, what particular memory testing software would you recommend?

Regards,
Chris

 

[Will Dormann]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds logical. But to my understanding, to recompile a kernel,
one needs to have one first. That's where it already goes wrong. My linux system just froze instantly
and now I start from the beginning again: how to install linux from an iso-CD without lock-ups during
HDD partitioning :-(

Try a different distro maybe? Or if you just want to test things
out, try Knoppix.


-WD

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Thanks. FWIW I thought PC3200 by Kingston would be a good choice, so that's what I bought.
Since win runs just fine, what particular memory testing software would you recommend?

This is the trick, I had a similar problem, the MS WINDOWS kernel runs in a different
part of memory (you may get data curruption somewhere lese then).
In my Tyan mobo in the BIOS is a 'full memory check option', dunno about your mobo.
Any make memory can have a problem, just exchange it if it fails the test.
C'T had a lot of good memory tests, on CD etc, but I dunno a website.
JP

 

[Douglas Bollinger]

Thanks. FWIW I thought PC3200 by Kingston would be a good choice, so
that's what I bought. Since win runs just fine, what particular memory
testing software would you recommend?

http://www.memtest86.com/

Let it run for at least 24 hours. Like others have said, just because the
memory works for Windows does not guarantee it will work for Linux as each
OS uses the memory differently (or used to, anyway).

If that works OK, use www.dejanews.com and search "comp.os.linux.hardware"
for tips on using Linux with a Nforce board.

 

[rms]

http://www.memtest86.com/

There is a newer version out on http://www.memtest.org The original is
apparently no longer supported.

rms

 

[Dale Pontius]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds logical. But to my understanding, to recompile a kernel,
one needs to have one first. That's where it already goes wrong. My linux system just froze instantly
and now I start from the beginning again: how to install linux from an iso-CD without lock-ups during
HDD partitioning :-(

Am I the only one facing these problems? Or do linux users simply ignore nForce2 mainboards?

The nForce2 is quite problematic under Linux, at the moment.
On the good side though, there are people working HARD on this, as
the nForce2 is one of the more solid and high-performing chipsets
on the Athlon family. If it's on your news feed, check out the
Linux kernel mailing list for more info.

In short, ACPI/APIC on the nForce2 is a bit of a mess, from what
I can read. On the bad side, they appear to have built some of the
ACPI tables wrong. On the good side, they have some intelligent
prefetch built in that can speed some operations up. But back on
the bad side, under certain circumstances the CPU can get badly
confused because the speedup makes the chipset deliver data too
fast.

But on the really good side, they're figuring things out and
issuing patches. There are people with ACPI and APIC running,
though there are others still with hangs.

But if you just want to work, configure the kernel to not have
ACPI or APIC, and keep them turned off in BIOS. If you can't get
far enough to build the kernel that way, there are boot time
flags to do the job. I've been running problem-free for over a
year this way. I'm really hoping that in a few months this stuff
will get hammered out and folded into the mainline 2.6 kernel,
and about that time Gentoo moves off of 2.4. Then I'll reinstall
my aging RH8.0.

It's a lot better than it was. Originally there wasn't even GART
support, so the only 3D was nVidia. (not my ATI)

Dale Pontius

 

[cleurs]

I did boot the system with acpi=off and noapic. Mandrake = no go. Whitebox = go! This is the first time I
use Whitebox, and so far it looks a lot like RedHat (not surprised). Too bad for mandrake, I liked that
distro a lot.

Everybody thanks a lot for thinking along!

Cheers,
Chris

 

[RusH]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds logical. But to my
understanding, to recompile a kernel, one needs to have one first.
That's where it already goes wrong. My linux system just froze
instantly and now I start from the beginning again: how to install
linux from an iso-CD without lock-ups during HDD partitioning :-(

you can pass parameters to kernel like noacpi noapic (lilo)

Am I the only one facing these problems? Or do linux users simply
ignore nForce2 mainboards?

your the one with faulty hardware I guess


Pozdrawiam.

 

[cleurs]

you can pass parameters to kernel like noacpi noapic (lilo)

I did so. Mandrake still didn't install, In the end I gave up Mandrake and
downloaded Whitebox (RedHat rip off) iso files, and installed these succesfully.

your the one with faulty hardware I guess

Apparently, but I was just wondering if it was a linux and nForce2 thing in general,
since nForce and Windows work just fine (I also executed memory tests as
suggested, no problems there). My conclusion is that despite the same linux kernel
used, there are more differences between several distributions than I thought. I
might give Gentoo a chance today, see how that behaves.

Regards,
Chris

 

[Tony Hill]

Apparently, but I was just wondering if it was a linux and nForce2 thing in general,
since nForce and Windows work just fine (I also executed memory tests as
suggested, no problems there). My conclusion is that despite the same linux kernel
used, there are more differences between several distributions than I thought. I
might give Gentoo a chance today, see how that behaves.

I recently had to wipe my Linux partition after a HD died, but I used
to have Mandrake 9.1 running on an nForce board (the first nForce, not
nForce2), ACPI and all. I did encounter one problem though. As best
as I could tell I had a PCI conflict with the Adaptec 7850 driver when
combined with both the integrated sound and NIC of the nForce board.
This was only in the default Mandrake kernel though, when I recompiled
the kernel either from the pristine source or from Mandrake's source
package, everything worked.

My new HD is in transit as we speak and I plan on throwing Mandrake
9.2 on the thing when it gets here. I'll see if I can't figure some
of these things out at that time.

 

[chris]

I recently had to wipe my Linux partition after a HD died, but I used to
have Mandrake 9.1 running on an nForce board (the first nForce, not
nForce2), ACPI and all. I did encounter one problem though. As best as
I could tell I had a PCI conflict with the Adaptec 7850 driver when
combined with both the integrated sound and NIC of the nForce board.
This was only in the default Mandrake kernel though, when I recompiled
the kernel either from the pristine source or from Mandrake's source
package, everything worked.

I'm up and running again! What solved my problem was *not* using the
Promise UDMA133 controller for my linux disk. I use that one now only for
my windows disk. The linux disk uses of the onboard HDD controller. I
still had to build the kernel with acpi=off and noapic, but all this
pretty much solved it. It still is a bit a weird since I used this Promise
card in my old 440BX setup without problems. I also can mount my windows
disks and read/write without problems. Lilo wouldn't install from CD, so
I'm using grub now as a bootmanager.

My new HD is in transit as we speak and I plan on throwing Mandrake 9.2
on the thing when it gets here. I'll see if I can't figure some of
these things out at that time.

As I said, after some time of trial and errors, Mandrake 9.2 is up and
running, and so far it feels just as stable as my previous setup. I even
have my CPU running quite overclocked: AMD2500 --> AMD3200 (just to see
how it handles, a 2500 is more than enough for my computing purposes).

Cheers,
Chris