Asus A7N8X-X and Linux, getting pretty desperate...

[cleurs]

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 flashed the BIOS to 1007 and disabeled APIC in the BIOS,
no improvement at all. 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

 

[Kyle Brant]

FWIW, I have Mandrake 9.2 running w/o problems on my a7n8x-dlx. 9.1
was a bit of a pain due to the lack of Nvidia drivers, but it did
load. I'm using a 40G WD HD for Linux. My system is dual boot, and
win2k boots from a Maxtor 60G HD. A freeze while partitioning and
formatting sounds bad, like a hardware failure, have you done any
tests? Temps look ok? Voltages look OK in BIOS? Have you tried to
install any other OS on the Maxtor HD with the same hardware (e.g.,
win2k)?

What specific errors are you encountering? You mention Mandrake 9.1
and 9.2 gives you errors in your post. Specificity is prized when you
are looking for help with a computer problem.
--
Best regards,
Kyle
| 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 flashed the BIOS to 1007 and disabeled APIC in
the BIOS,
| no improvement at all. 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
|
|

 

[cleurs]

FWIW, I have Mandrake 9.2 running w/o problems on my a7n8x-dlx. 9.1
was a bit of a pain due to the lack of Nvidia drivers, but it did
load. I'm using a 40G WD HD for Linux. My system is dual boot, and
win2k boots from a Maxtor 60G HD. A freeze while partitioning and
formatting sounds bad, like a hardware failure, have you done any
tests? Temps look ok? Voltages look OK in BIOS? Have you tried to
install any other OS on the Maxtor HD with the same hardware (e.g.,
win2k)?

It concerns a 80GB Maxtor HDD. It works perfectly fine in my old PC. There I
can use the exact similar setup, except for the mobo/mem/cpu, without any
troubles. That's why I'm thinking of linux / nForce2 being a bad combo.

What specific errors are you encountering? You mention Mandrake 9.1
and 9.2 gives you errors in your post. Specificity is prized when you
are looking for help with a computer problem.

Sorry, I thought my post was pretty extensive. Thanks for your reaction. To be
more specific, when I boot from the mandrake iso-CD, I have to decide where
to install linux. Either automatically or manually, as soon as my partitions are
checked and formatted, the system lock up and a hardware reboot is needed.
So without my old PC linux is not even getting installed.

When I remove the Promise card, stability improves, I might even be able to
install linux, but when configuring mandrake (and installing Koffice, Xine, etc.)
the system freezes and after a forced reboot of the system, the user account is
completely unuseble (X messed up).

What I don't get is that windows runs just fine. It is soleley linux related.

Regards,
Chris

 

[Paul]

It concerns a 80GB Maxtor HDD. It works perfectly fine in my old PC. There I
can use the exact similar setup, except for the mobo/mem/cpu, without any
troubles. That's why I'm thinking of linux / nForce2 being a bad combo.


Sorry, I thought my post was pretty extensive. Thanks for your reaction. To be
more specific, when I boot from the mandrake iso-CD, I have to decide where
to install linux. Either automatically or manually, as soon as my partitions are
checked and formatted, the system lock up and a hardware reboot is needed.
So without my old PC linux is not even getting installed.

When I remove the Promise card, stability improves, I might even be able to
install linux, but when configuring mandrake (and installing Koffice, Xine, etc.)
the system freezes and after a forced reboot of the system, the user account is
completely unuseble (X messed up).

What I don't get is that windows runs just fine. It is soleley linux related.

Regards,
Chris

Standard advice is to test memory with memtest86, from memtest86.com.
Sometimes an install will be damaged by the files getting corrupted, as
they move through system memory. Otherwise, the symptoms imply something
about the OS being used - if one loads and is trouble free, then the
other one must have some kind of problem with chipset or disk driver.
There are even occasional posts here, by people who have marginal
OS installer CDs - that can cause problems with the files
that get installed.

Can you run applications like Prime95 in Windows ? Or maybe try out
3DMark ? These applications are handy as non-specific test programs,
to determine if power and cooling performance are adequate. If there
is some marginal hardware on the motherboard, these applications may
expose that marginality.

For alternate OSes, sometimes there will be a web page that lists the
hardware that is supported. That is the place to look for comments
about whether support for a chipset is minimal or has been completed.

Since this is an Nforce2 motherboard, you can also try a search over
on nforcershq.com, for symptoms similar to yours.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Ben Pope]

Hi all,

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.

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.

Try Kernel 2.6 and/or using:
acpi=off noapic
when booting the kernel.

I had hard disk corruption issues with my nForce until I did that, now it's
perfect.

Ben

 

[cleurs]

Try Kernel 2.6 and/or using:

Sorry for the ignorence, I'm not a very experienced Linux user. If I understand correctly,
you advice me to get iso's which contain kernel 2.6 (like mandrake 10 beta. Any
others?).

acpi=off noapic
when booting the kernel.

Is disabling this function in the BIOS sufficient? If not, how exactly do I boot the kernel
using "acpi=off noapic"?

I had hard disk corruption issues with my nForce until I did that, now it's
perfect.

Thanks for the feedback Ben.
Regards,
Chris

 

[Ben Pope]

Sorry for the ignorence, I'm not a very experienced Linux user. If I
understand correctly, you advice me to get iso's which contain kernel 2.6
(like mandrake 10 beta. Any
others?).

No, actually I was suggesting you download and compile your own kernel. But
if you are not happy with compiling and installing kernels, then maybe
not...

Is disabling this function in the BIOS sufficient?

Possibly but I wouldn't recommend it. I've found that that would be roughly
equivalent to noacpi, with acpi=off you do get some useful functionality
from it.

If not, how exactly do I boot the kernel using "acpi=off noapic"?

Depends if you're using LILO or GRUB or some other bootloader.

With LILO you'll need to do something like:
append="noapic acpi=off"
in the correct section of /etc/lilo.conf, then run lilo (just type lilo at
the command prompt)

With grub it'll look more like:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.whatever root=/dev/hda6 noapic acpi=off
in /boot/grub/grub.conf

Ben

 

[Ben Pope]

I should mention that it's generally ill-advised to modify your
configuration files unless you know what you're doing...

I suggest you add a new section with the changes, rather than modify an
existing boot section. Also, keep a backup of the filkes you modify... in
extreme cases you can boot from a "Live CD" and then put the copies back.

Ben

 

[no one]

It concerns a 80GB Maxtor HDD. It works perfectly fine in my old PC. There I
can use the exact similar setup, except for the mobo/mem/cpu, without any
troubles. That's why I'm thinking of linux / nForce2 being a bad combo.

Sorry, I thought my post was pretty extensive. Thanks for your reaction. To be
more specific, when I boot from the mandrake iso-CD, I have to decide where
to install linux. Either automatically or manually, as soon as my partitions are
checked and formatted, the system lock up and a hardware reboot is needed.
So without my old PC linux is not even getting installed.

I posted a link very recently regarding getting the ASUS A7N8X-X
motherboard working with Linux. I had the same problem of perpetual
lockups at first. I eventually got it working so there are no lockups
and it is even more stable than my last system. Getting the two to
work together seems to be problematic for many users. I think it has
something to do with the nVidia chipset and the Mandrake kernel... and
the way the chipset handles IDE - you may have noticed that lockup
often occurs during heavy disk read/writes.

Anyway, I dedicated a website to this problem here:

http://piff.freshpull.com/asus_linux.html

I personally solved the problem by disabling DMA HD access - I've
had no lockups since then. This is a rather drastic measure,
though, and you might have success by following some of the other
suggestions listed on the website.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, email me at
the address provided.

Good luck.

 

[cleurs]

I posted a link very recently regarding getting the ASUS A7N8X-X
motherboard working with Linux. I had the same problem of perpetual
lockups at first. I eventually got it working so there are no lockups
and it is even more stable than my last system. Getting the two to
work together seems to be problematic for many users. I think it has
something to do with the nVidia chipset and the Mandrake kernel... and
the way the chipset handles IDE - you may have noticed that lockup
often occurs during heavy disk read/writes.

Anyway, I dedicated a website to this problem here:

http://piff.freshpull.com/asus_linux.html

I personally solved the problem by disabling DMA HD access - I've
had no lockups since then. This is a rather drastic measure,
though, and you might have success by following some of the other
suggestions listed on the website.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, email me at
the address provided.

Good luck.

Hi,

During my search on the internet I found your site already! However, to my
understanding modifying /etc/lilo.conf and turning off DMA are only options once
I've got a more or less working OS installed. My problem is that I won't get that far
with my new mobo :-( I think I'll download another distro tonight (maybe whitebox
linux) and see if that will be more successful. At this moment I *really* tried
everything most people suggested (installed 2.6 kernel at my ols system and
shifted the HDD to my new one, noapic, checked memory, flashed BIOS, etc.),
without any luck. If another distro isn't successful, I might return this mobo and get
a VIA based board instead...

Thanks all for the help.

Regards,
Chris

 

[no one]

Hi,

During my search on the internet I found your site already! However, to my
understanding modifying /etc/lilo.conf and turning off DMA are only options once
I've got a more or less working OS installed. My problem is that I won't get that far
with my new mobo :-( I think I'll download another distro tonight (maybe whitebox
linux) and see if that will be more successful. At this moment I *really* tried
everything most people suggested (installed 2.6 kernel at my ols system and
shifted the HDD to my new one, noapic, checked memory, flashed BIOS, etc.),
without any luck. If another distro isn't successful, I might return this mobo and get
a VIA based board instead...

I had problems with Via chipset on as Asus as well. :/ hehe. Ok, well...
sound distortion at least - nothing quite as critical.

Ok, if you can boot from your CD-ROM from a Linux distro such
as slackware live or whatever.. and if you can get the distro to
detect your HD and then get a command prompt... you can turn off
DMA permanently (or at least until you get the OS installed) by
typing:

hdparm -d 0 -k 1 /dev/hda

the -k 1 switch tells the HD to keep the setting. Once this is
done then you might have better luck installing an OS onto it.

I do have to say that if you get it working then it will
be well worth it. I am extremely happy with this motherboard.
The sound quality is *outstanding*, and it is *very* stable (no
crashes at all) once you fix this problem. I've even set it to
the overclock settings. If you can fix it.. it is worth keeping.

Tell me how you get along and, once again, good luck.

 

[no one]

hdparm -d 0 -k 1 /dev/hda

As root!

the -k 1 switch tells the HD to keep the setting. Once this is
done then you might have better luck installing an OS onto it.

Please correct me if I am wrong other people reading this
newsgroup. I'm a bit confused about the difference between
the -K and -k switch myself...

 

[farqua]

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 flashed the BIOS to 1007 and disabeled APIC in the BIOS,
no improvement at all. 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

I would suggest you download and install the nVidia nForce driver for
Linux. It may solve many of your problems. As for the Promise controller,
I suggest you use hdparm -I /dev/hdx ("x" being the drive letter) to check
what mode your harddrive is running. I am using a Promise 100 TX2 card on
my A7V8X mobo to running my CD and DVD drives. The drives were not running
in optimal mode so I had to put instructions in /etc/rc.local start-up
script to get the correct mode running:

hdparm -d1 -X udma2 /dev/hde
hdparm -d1 -X udma2 /dev/hdf

Good Luck!

 

[cleurs]

I had problems with Via chipset on as Asus as well. :/ hehe. Ok, well...
sound distortion at least - nothing quite as critical.

I've got a "good old" SB Live (4.1) with the appropiate speaker set. I switched off the
onboard sound in the BIOS since I knew the SB Live works fine with Linux.

Ok, if you can boot from your CD-ROM from a Linux distro such
as slackware live or whatever.. and if you can get the distro to
detect your HD and then get a command prompt... you can turn off
DMA permanently (or at least until you get the OS installed) by
typing:

hdparm -d 0 -k 1 /dev/hda

the -k 1 switch tells the HD to keep the setting. Once this is
done then you might have better luck installing an OS onto it.

I do have to say that if you get it working then it will
be well worth it. I am extremely happy with this motherboard.
The sound quality is *outstanding*, and it is *very* stable (no
crashes at all) once you fix this problem. I've even set it to
the overclock settings. If you can fix it.. it is worth keeping.

That's right. Overclocking goes extremely well indeed. My AMD 2500+ runs at 3200+
without any problems. I had to increase the CPU core voltage to 1.8V, but my system
was running the entire night (downloading Whitebox Linux) and the CPU temp didn't
exceed 49 oC. Onthe other hand, that's more a lucky CPU thing since the board runs on
spec.

Tell me how you get along and, once again, good luck.

I'll give the other distro a chance. Otherwise I'll swap it for a VIA KT600 based board,
although that would mean less memory performance as I saw with the "passmark
performance test".

Cheers,
Chris

 

[cleurs]

I should mention that it's generally ill-advised to modify your
configuration files unless you know what you're doing...

I suggest you add a new section with the changes, rather than modify an
existing boot section. Also, keep a backup of the filkes you modify... in
extreme cases you can boot from a "Live CD" and then put the copies back.

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

 

[Ben Pope]

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!

Gentoo is my new fave... I think Portage (their package management) is
excellent.

But I've only ever tried RH otherwise... so I'm hardly an expert

Ben

 

[cleurs]

Gentoo is my new fave... I think Portage (their package management) is
excellent.

Which release would you advise? I saw at their ftp server several iso's:

/linux/gentoo/releases/x86/1.4/livecd/athlon-xp/ is pretty straightforward, but the newer releases at
/linux/gentoo/experimental/x86/livecd/ looks much more confusing. Which iso's to take?

But I've only ever tried RH otherwise... so I'm hardly an expert

Well, your "limited" expertise was highly appreciated ;-)

Cheers,
Chris

 

[cleurs]

Which release would you advise? I saw at their ftp server several iso's:

/linux/gentoo/releases/x86/1.4/livecd/athlon-xp/ is pretty straightforward, but the newer releases at
/linux/gentoo/experimental/x86/livecd/ looks much more confusing. Which iso's to take?

Never mind, I got to the Gentoo website and read the manual.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Ben Pope]

Never mind, I got to the Gentoo website and read the manual.

It's all about options...

I went with a stage3 install for simplicity, since I have an Athlon XP and
there's a release for it, I found little point in compiling everything in
sight.

Ben

 

[chris]

Anyway, I dedicated a website to this problem here:

http://piff.freshpull.com/asus_linux.html

You might want to add to your site that, besides the latest BIOS and
compiling the kernel with acpi=off noapic, definately *not to boot* from
an external IDE controller. This may solve a lot of trouble. I finally
swapped my HDDs: win disks at the Promise card and linux disk at the
onboard controller. I got my system completely up and running now, at
last.

Cheers,
Chris