# Asus P5B Install - a preliminary solution

## hflacke

I read about the problems with the new P5B Asus getting the CDROM running.

Here is my way:

- The 2006.0 Live CD does not recognize the CDROM after booting from it.

- You have to use an alternative CDROM to install from - i.e. a USB CDOM

To get the system running after installation:

echo "= sys-kernel/mm-sources-2.6.18_rc4-r1">> /etc/portage/package.keywords

emerge =sys-kernel/mm-sources-2.6.18_rc4-r1

cd /usr/src/linux

make menuconfig: <M> JMicron non-AHCI support (Experimental)

genkernel --no-clean all

boot the Kernel with den parameter "all-generic-ide". i.e.:

 title Kernel 2.6.18-rc4-mm1

        kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.18-rc4-mm1 \

        all-generic-ide root=/dev/ram0

        init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda1

        initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.18-rc4-mm1

After booting you will find the CDROM at" /dev/hda"

----------

## zuluxxx

Hi I've had the same problem with Gigabyte GA 965P DS3, no CDROM

install from net, 

could you tell what would the grub look like for non genkernel users ?

(no initram neither)

----------

## Noss

I have the some problem. I have an asus p5b, with ICH8 for sata and JMicron for IDE drives.... The kernel 2.6.18-rc have a module for the ICH8 but no for the JMicron. Other kernels have a driver for the JMicron but no for the ICH8 chipset.

When will be released a kernel with the two options?

Also you talk about solution for the problem, but I don't see that module in that kernel... I only saw other JMicron module but no ICH......

Another thing... When I compille the kernel 2.6.18-rc4 I dont have a problems, but then when I want make emerge nvidia-kernel I recived errors!!!. If I compiled with gentoo kernels (2.6.16-rc4) I dont recived errors. Why ?

Thx bay! and good look!

----------

## hflacke

 *zuluxxx wrote:*   

> Hi I've had the same problem with Gigabyte GA 965P DS3, no CDROM
> 
> install from net, 
> 
> could you tell what would the grub look like for non genkernel users ?
> ...

 

Just someting like

title Linux

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot//vmlinuz  all-generic-ide root=/dev/sda1

Bye

----------

## hflacke

 *Noss wrote:*   

> I have the some problem. I have an asus p5b, with ICH8 for sata and JMicron for IDE drives.... The kernel 2.6.18-rc have a 
> 
> module for the ICH8 but no for the JMicron. 

 

I didn't use the 2.618-rc4 but the 2.6.18-rc4-mm1

Bye

----------

## Noss

 *hflacke wrote:*   

>  *Noss wrote:*   I have the some problem. I have an asus p5b, with ICH8 for sata and JMicron for IDE drives.... The kernel 2.6.18-rc have a 
> 
> module for the ICH8 but no for the JMicron.  
> 
> I didn't use the 2.618-rc4 but the 2.6.18-rc4-mm1
> ...

 

Well, I want said 2.6.18-rc4-mm1. And i only see this  JMicron JMB36x support. I dont see JMicron non-AHCI support (Experimenta) Where is it ?

thx bay!

----------

## zuluxxx

it s straight  in device drivers

----------

## agent_jdh

IIRC the JMicron driver is in the libata section.  Remember, you'll need to have scsi support (scsi basic support, scsi hard disk, and scsi cd rom) enabled if you use the libata driver - even for IDE optical drive.

----------

## FantomKnight

Hey guys, look in the BIOS on the P5B.  Does the SATA controller have a "Compatability Mode" option?  If so, choose that and it should solve the problems.  I had to do this on a Dell PowerEdge server a while back to get Gentoo to install.

----------

## agent_jdh

What driver supports the gigabit ethernet on the P5B btw?  The normal realtek 8169 driver?  It's one of the boards I'm considering for a switch to Conroe.

----------

## Noss

 *agent_jdh wrote:*   

> What driver supports the gigabit ethernet on the P5B btw?  The normal realtek 8169 driver?  It's one of the boards I'm considering for a switch to Conroe.

 

you must download a driver from realtek, the last is r100_1.04 .... (Linux driver for kernel 2.4.x and 2.6.x)

this is the link

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloads1-3.aspx?lineid=1&famid=4&series=2003072&Software=True#2003072Unix%20(Linux)

and remember, you must chain anything lines... this is the link https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-488685-highlight-.html

and remember dont use the kernel's drivers, because you onle can download at 33Kbs with it

bay!

----------

## agent_jdh

 *Noss wrote:*   

>  *agent_jdh wrote:*   What driver supports the gigabit ethernet on the P5B btw?  The normal realtek 8169 driver?  It's one of the boards I'm considering for a switch to Conroe. 
> 
> you must download a driver from realtek, the last is r100_1.04 .... (Linux driver for kernel 2.4.x and 2.6.x)
> 
> this is the link
> ...

 

Interesting .... I've got a RealTek 8169 based gigabit nic in both my gentoo boxes at the moment, using the 8169 kernel driver ... decided to give the driver from RealTek a shot - it fails to compile like this -

```
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.17-gentoo-r6'

  CC [M]  /root/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.o

/root/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.c:51: error: expected ‘)’ before string constant

/root/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.c:52: error: expected ‘)’ before string constant

/root/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.c:53: error: expected ‘)’ before string constant

make[3]: *** [/root/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.o] Error 1

make[2]: *** [_module_/root/r1000_v1.04/src] Error 2

make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.17-gentoo-r6'

make[1]: *** [modules] Error 2

make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/r1000_v1.04/src'

make: *** [modules] Error 2
```

The relevant lines in the code it's complaining about are-

```
MODULE_PARM (speed, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");

MODULE_PARM (duplex, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");

MODULE_PARM (autoneg, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");
```

What I knew about C I forgot over 10 years ago.  Anyone got any ideas?

EDIT - Compiles OK on my server box which is running a 2.6.16 kernel, so looks like this is an incompatability with 2.6.17.

----------

## Noss

Hi!

You must chaing this lines in your src/r1000_n.c 

```

ODULE_PARM (speed, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");

MODULE_PARM (duplex, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");

MODULE_PARM_ (autoneg, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i"); 

```

and put this other

```

ODULE_PARM_DESC (speed, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");

MODULE_PARM_DESC (duplex, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");

MODULE_PARM_DESC (autoneg, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i"); 

```

Bay and good look

----------

## vladoportos

Hi,

I bought this ASUS P5B Delux and as i read here that was a terrible mistake  :Sad:  gentoo wount boot, ( no setting the SATA controller to "Compatability Mode" doesnt help at all) 

I dont have ani USB CDrom to boot from... what can i do ? i realy need to install that gentoo ... also i read that there is problem with NIC ... 

They should put sticker on box "NOT FOR LINUX" or somethink.

Im getting despred, i realy thinking to go and buy windows...  cause this sux terrible... i do not need cd rom on it cause is for "server" there is just 6 SATA HDD and 1xIDE... i need that to work fine also NIC...

----------

## Fuller_

 *vladoportos wrote:*   

> Hi,
> 
> I bought this ASUS P5B Delux and as i read here that was a terrible mistake  gentoo wount boot, ( no setting the SATA controller to "Compatability Mode" doesnt help at all) 
> 
> I dont have ani USB CDrom to boot from... what can i do ? i realy need to install that gentoo ... also i read that there is problem with NIC ... 
> ...

 

Windows wont help you either as it wont boot for the same reason, as far as i could figure that out.

I got the same probs with the P5B-Deluxe booting various linux livecds whereas i got both nics working by installing by pxe with 2.6.17-r6

The only problem is that; if no cable is plugged in, the driver spams the dmesg with that error  :Sad: 

I going forward to test with the all-generic-ide and the 2.6.18-rc4-mm1 sources asap.

AFIK the problems originate from a mistake in the JMicron driver code that will be cleared in 2.6.18 final according to alan cox

greets

Fuller

----------

## vladoportos

Actualy win works without problems... i change motherboard with my work pc so i have now that Pentium D and on server is LanParty DFI which works fine... som im installing gentto now  :Wink: 

----------

## Tom17

So, I got an Asus P5B just under a week ago and have been struggling with it since. This was meant to be a simple "swap the drives to the new mobo and get going". I dont think I need to start a new thread on this as there seem to be loads already. Also dont want to pollute the threads for the new livecds that "kernelOfTruth" has been making. So i'll bung it here. Sorry if this is the wrong thread...

On my first attempt, I simply put my old PATA boot drive onto the JMicron PATA port. This drive had an old standard x86 Gentoo install on it. So I set the BIOS to boot from this drive, which was no problem, but then GRUB would not even get to the Stage1.5/2, it would just give an error (I forget the error number right now - but it basically meant disk not found) before the GRUB menu. This was where my frustration started. I figured that the grub code in the MBR was looking specifically for (hd0,0), but now I could not tell which drive it would be recognised as by GRUB. I also did not wish to risk changing the MBR just yet as I wanted the option of putting the drive back into the original PC as I need to use some of the services configured on it.

OK, so at this point I realised I would have to do a fresh install, however as this was to be a server machine, I did not want to put a CD-ROM drive into the it so I was trying to do this from a USB stick. After hours spent trying to make a working bootable USB distro, I got my new machine up and running. Very cool, except the distro that I managed to get booting from USB (DSL)would not see either the ICH8-SATA drives or the JMicron PATA drives. I then spent the rest of the day trying to get DSL-N working, which is a 2.6 kernel (after I discovered that DSL was 2.4 which does not suport SATA natively) but could not get this to boot from USB. *sigh*

Finally I ripped out a CD-ROM from another PC and booted an FC5 install disk as I heard that I could use the "all-generic-ide" option. So I went ahead with this. With the all-generic-ide option set, it seems that the kernel recognises SATA1 as hda, SATA2 as hdc, SATA3 as hde, SATA4 as hdg and the 2 channels on the JMicron as hdk & hdl. After the initial install, I forgot to add the boot param "add all-generic-ide" again so the installation completed itself on sda rather than hda. I noticed this when there was no CD-ROM detected. So I rebooted, put the "all-generic-ide" back in but it was no good. Something was now expecting / to be on /dev/sda* but it was on /dev/hda* instead so it would not boot.

Re-installed FC5, this time remembering to add "all-generic-ide" after the post-install reboot. All was ok. The SATA drives were detected as hd* (not my preferred solution, but it works for now) and the JMicron-connected drives were visible. No networking though. I downloaded the network drivers from Realtek, compiled them (after copying across an FC5 kernel-sources rpm on a USB stick), installed them (they loaded fine) but I could not get any life out of the network card by following their instructions. So I bunged in a cheapie realtek 100MBps card for now. All is ok.

Now I started getting to know FedoraCore5. its ok, but not quite Gentoo that I was used to. It installed by default using LVM which was new to me. After not being able to shrink the LogicalVolume mounted on / (I do not need a 300GB root partition!) and not being able to retrieve some data from another LVM'd drive, I decided I won't use LVM for now. Re-installed FC5 again, using normal partitions instead of LVM and I cannot get it to boot. It hangs before the GRUB menu can appear with a blank screen!!!

So now, I am back at the starting block, trying to decide what to do so I thought I would post my experience so far in here.

And now for a question...

Will it be possible for GRUB to boot from a drive on the JMicron IDE controller? I dont think GRUB knows how to identify that disk. Maybe its another problem. What woudl I have to do to make grub see the disk?

This is the final set up I would *like* (as I will not need to reconfigure everything on a new server)

My old PATA system drive on the JMicron controller as my boot drive. It would be nice if I could leave my x86 Gentoo system intact.

My old PATA data drives on a PATA card I will plug in (Haven't even gotten there yet)

2 * SATA drives plugged into the onboard SATA ports - I will configure these as software RAID1 in Linux.

Onboard GB NIC to work.

I guess I will have to settle for a SATA boot drive on the SATA1 port. (will need to buy ANOTHER SATA for my RAID if I do this *sigh*). I see myself trying one of these 2.6.18-rc5 AMD64 Gentoo live cd's and doing a fresh install that way. At least I get to keep Gentoo.

I am used to building pc's that "just work" (Yeah, Windoze). This is the first one that has really kicked me in the nuts like this, cheers for any help.

</stress>

Thanks for listening  :Very Happy: 

----------

## odegard

I just ordered the ASUS P5B, knowing there would be problems initially. Things will work out eventually though.

I plan to try this: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml

From what I've understood, the SATA drives will work provided you connect them to the ICH8 and not the JMicro controller. So, I'll use my current gentoo system to make a bootable liveusb stick and install from there. Pft, who needs cd-roms!

----------

## Tom17

Yep, the SATA drives connected on ICH( work just fine. The only thing I know in that regard is that if you use a normal kernel, they are sda sdb sdc sdd but if you use the all-generic-ide boot option then they become hda hdc hde and hdg (I assume that the generic ide option assumes that each controller has 2 drives as a normal pata controller would, but each controller only has one drive as its SATA)

Thanks for that link, I think I will try to get that liveUSB working, it could be my ticket to a working PC!

----------

## kernelOfTruth

If windows boots off the JMicron, it should be no problem to load grub at all (I could be wrong)

but the next problem is to get SATA / native mode on that controller running "properly"

I haven't   :Rolling Eyes: 

it either works & takes pretty long to detect my IDE-drives 

or

it just hangs there (& doesn't reach init / the root partition)

I haven't tried SATA on that controller since I only got 2 SATA-drives & don't want to switch the controller (at the moment connected to the Silicon Image Hardware Raid), otherwise I would lose all my data of the raid0

sorry, that I can't give you any input on that point (SATA)

----------

## odegard

 *Tom17 wrote:*   

> Thanks for that link, I think I will try to get that liveUSB working, it could be my ticket to a working PC!

 

Any luck Tom?

I got all the new parts now and will try this method. Haven't installed gentoo in 3-4 years... this could be fun  :Very Happy: 

----------

## Tom17

No luck yet... There are some big differences in how liveCDs work and liveUSB and I have not worked out the subtleties yet. I need to sit down and fiddle with the init scripts I think.

Funny cos last week when I was making my first ever liveUSB's it was a simple matter of copying the iso conents to your USB stick and configuring syslinux.cfg. I will sit down and work out the subtleties this weekend I hope. Will post my results here  :Smile: 

Tom...

----------

## odegard

Hm, I just finished making the live USB...

I haven't assembled the new system yet, since I have to use some of the older parts. Meaning, when I put the new system together, the old one will be gone. So, I'd like it to work.

What problems did you encounter?

----------

## odegard

Alright. Assembled the new system. POST is fine, BIOS is fine. BIOS even recognizes the removable media, the live USB stick I made, but it won't boot from it.

Dangit.

My old system is laying on the floor and I won't reassemble it.

Bah, guess I have to install windows and wait for kernel 2.6.18  :Sad: 

----------

## odegard

Ok, tried to boot my laptop from the USB stick (a D410 Latitude) and it worked. So, the problem must be with the ASUS P5B board.

----------

## Tom17

Welcome to the problems I have had  :Smile:  It would find the bootloader, find the initrd or whatever, but then fail at some point during the init script.

Been too busy out drinking but maybe I will get some time with it tomorrow...

----------

## odegard

I only get a message saying "You must put a proper boot media in the selected boot device" or something like that, as if the USB stick wasn't there.

Would you mind telling me what you've set up in the BIOS regarding USB handling?

----------

## Tom17

It is a while ago now that I played with the USB stick. But basically, with the stick plugged in, press f8(I think?) during boot and it should give you the option to boot from USB.

Alternatively, again with the USB stick plugged in, enter the BIOS setup and if it recognises your USB stick, you should be able to select it as the primary boot device.

I got bored of pulling my hair out with USB sticks and installed a CD-ROM and now have a fully working system  :Very Happy: 

I may yet build a USB stick for rescuing this computer though. And I learn something in the process  :Smile: .

The steps I used to get my system going were:

1.1  Boot from the Conrad LiveCD.

1.2  At the boot prompt, boot up using "conrad all-generic-ide".

This will allow the JMicron controller to work so that conrad can completely boot.

This will also have the unfortunate side-effect that that the first SATA drive shows up as /dev/hda, the 2nd SATA drive is /dev/hdc (NOT /dev/hdb!!)

I did not get any RTL8169 support (had to use an old 100mbps card temporarily)

2.1  Inside the conrad livecd environment, go ahead and start your install either using the normal Gentoo guide or the Conrad guide.

2.2  When you get to the kernel install stage, choose any kernel that is at least 2.6.18-rc4 or above (I used 2.6.18-rc5-no1). be sure to configure it with support for JMicron, SATA and the RTL8169.

2.3  When configuring your fstab, do NOT put /dev/hdxx for your mount points. When we reboot, the drive will be recognised as /dev/sdxx.

2.4  When configuring and installing GRUB make sure you put the root=/dev/sdxx rather than root=/dev/hdxx

I had to have my SATA drives set up in bios using some kind of compatibility mode. I cannot check now but can do later if needed. Without this, GRUB would not do anythign at all...

These instructions are very "off the top of my head" as I am at work right now.

I dont know how stable it will be with this kernel, but it works ok and I can now start installing the rest of my system. I can install a more stable kernel once the 2.6.18.x branch has been released properly.

I toyed with going EMT64, but after doing some research, I have decided it is not worth bothering just yet.

I hope this is at least of some help to someone  :Smile:  booty USB stick coming this way soon maybe if anyone is interested...

Cheers,

Tom...

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## odegard

Thanks for the write-up  :Smile: 

I decided to ditch the USB-approach too, and booted the 2006.1 livecd with all-generic-ide like you (I'll check out the conrad livecd though!)

However, after just a few minutes, before I got to the prompt the first time, my computer died. After several days of testing I found it it was the gfx card. I've got a new one now, sitting on my desk next to me. I'll have another go later tonight.

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## Tom17

Ahh bad luck.

Hope you have better luck with the rest!

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## odegard

Would you mind posting your kernel config? -Thanks

----------

## Tom17

Before I do that, I just got home and am just checking a few things in the BIOS setup...

If you go into the "IDE Configuration sub menu and select Compatible mode for the SATA configuration, then grub (for me) just hangs, a flashing cursor is all I get, so don't use that.

I have had it set to "Enhanced" and then "Configure SATA as" set to IDE which works well... Just trying out "AHCI" mode ince I have compiled AHCI support into my kernel. Trying that now... GRUB works fine but my current kernel barfs out at some point. CBA copying that all from the screen. Will have to check that out later.

So for now, have "Configure SATA" set to "IDE" and the kernel I have below should work ok with 2.6.18-rc5-no1 "No? Hell No!"...

http://nomorepasting.com/paste.php?pasteID=68570

I have a Silicon Image PATA card plugged in as well so I have the driver for that in there. And there are some things I dont need, like sound etc so be careful to enable what you need as this is fairly cut down to my needs. Also, its no professionally cofigured kernel by any means, just a hack together I did from work today.

btw. Is there an easier way of pasting your kernel config in here? That was huge and I had to cut/paste them all out of a putty window.

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## odegard

I'm pretty sure the config resides inside a file somewhere. Since I'm not on a linu system right now, I can't tell you exactly where it is, but I think you'd find it in /usr/src/linux somewhere. Thanks for your work  :Smile: 

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## Tom17

Oh yeah, its in a file for sure, ".config"

But its on a remote machine. I guess I could have scp'd it across and copied/pasted it in windows(I surf from there, yes) if I was less lazy  :Smile: . Anyways, thats off topic now  :Smile: 

Hope that works out for you.

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## odegard

I went through the bios looking for things when I saw that the default CPU voltage read 1.28, below 1.325 which is normal. What voltage do you get? I'm considering upping it manually to 1.4.

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## Tom17

Haven't even looked at that. I only have a Celeron in there at the moment. Planning on doing my Conroe (or kentsfield maybe if they get cool and if they fit) upgrade in a year or so when they are cheap cheap cheap. So I am not too bothered about core voltagesfor my CPU.

TBPH, I would leave the voltage alone unless you want to start overclocking it. Each procesor is calibrated and uses the voltage it needs from what I understand. If you have a lower voltage one then you just have a better quality processor.

But then if it helps with the stability probs you have then maybe worth trying. Although I hope that gets fixed by the new GPU.

Currently trying to emerge my world but getting a ton of errors "use this USE flag, use that USE flag" *sigh*. Getting there.

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## odegard

I set voltage for both CPU and RAM just to be on the safe side.

Now I'm enjoying the ugly TWM awaiting the compilation of xfce4  :Very Happy: 

This system is *fast*, it's way over expectations!

----------

## Tom17

Did you get it going the same/similar way I did?

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## odegard

I think I did it the hard way  :Smile: 

I booted off the normal livecd with: gentoo all-generic-ide irqpoll

Everything went ok until I wondered what kernel to use. I found the "No? Hell no!" kernel-thread (the one you used I think). Might as well set up Portage Overlay sooner than later. Configured it, started compiling but immediately hit an error. I manually edited a file with a patch given in that thread. I've used gentoo for some years now, but mostly as a user, not a hacker. I'm proud I got it working. Sadly I hit another error that couldn't be fixed, so I "downgraded" to 2.6.18_r4-no2 and it worked just fine.

Now, I struggled somewhat with the disks, but it's was only because I didn't fully understand what happened. I installed on hda. I configured grub to use hda, and I made fstab with hda. Upon booting I got an error with grub, managed eventually to solve that one using the grub cli. Den I got an error about not being able to mount the root fs via vfs. I read in the forums that I needed to enable this and that scsi device etc. etc. I must've compiled the kernel atleast 5 times when it hit me that fstab still used hda and not sda...   :Rolling Eyes: 

After that everything has been a breeze! Compiled X in 25 minutes, that's a new record for me. Configured it, started up nicely on second try. Now I'm waiting for XFCE4 to compile.

Again, I'm just amazed how fast this system is. I timed compiling inkscape on my old system, I'll get back to you on how fast it is on this system. When everything is set up properly I might even overclock a little. Default freq. is ~1.8GHz, but getting it to 2.8-3.0 should be trivial from what I've reead elsewhere. I'll buy some watercooling later, so for now I won't go crazy with the overclocking, perhaps 2,4 or something  :Very Happy: 

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## Tom17

 *odegard wrote:*   

> I think I did it the hard way 
> 
> I manually edited a file with a patch given in that thread. I've used gentoo for some years now, but mostly as a user, not a hacker. I'm proud I got it working.
> 
> 

 

Hmm yeah I had an error too, I forgot about it till you mentioned it. I found a duplicate definition of a function in one of the source files. I removed the dupe and it worked fine, quite odd. I too have mostly been a user so I hear ya. This is my first bit of hacking about. I'd like to use a vanilla source or a gentoo-sources but there were none available yet that dont need patching.

 *odegard wrote:*   

> 
> 
> I must've compiled the kernel atleast 5 times when it hit me that fstab still used hda and not sda...  
> 
> 

 

Ooops, that has to be the biggest gotcha if you build your system while booted from a kernel with all-generic-ide

 *odegard wrote:*   

> 
> 
> After that everything has been a breeze! Compiled X in 25 minutes, that's a new record for me. Configured it, started up nicely on second try. Now I'm waiting for XFCE4 to compile.
> 
> 

 

Mine aint so quick, but then I only have a 2.6Ghz Celeron D in there. Conroe comes later  :Smile: 

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## odegard

Oh, btw, I probably didn't configure everything properly. Running hdparm -tT /sda1 gives me ~20MB/s. Booting of the livecd fooling them into thinkng they are PATA disks and enabling DMA I got around 60. I'll investigate later. Curiosly there are some options in SCSI lower level driver (or something like that) that doesn't exist in my kernel. Anyway, 2.6.18 final must come any day now.

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## freelight

Since this thread talks about Grub, I decided to pick this one to post in out of the many Jmicron threads here. 

I have a JMicron board (Asus P5B), but I don't own any SATA drives, and don't want to buy one right now unless I absolutely have to.  (Saving up for a WD Raptor, can't afford it yet.)

I booted from the Gentoo 2006.1 LiveCD (using all-generic-ide) and happily installed an AMD64 system on my PATA drive, installed Grub on it, but now Grub refuses to start - won't even throw me a CLI. If there is some way I can get it working on the PATA drive, I'd really appreciate some help with this. Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Using Windows on a regular basis makes me feel unclean  :Sad: 

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## odegard

I don't know much about GRUB, but it sounds like you didn't install it to the MBR.

Anywho, kernel 2.8.16 is out today with a Jmicron fix.

I reccommend you boot off your livecd with all-generic-ide, mnt the bootdrive and doublecheck that GRUB is indeed in the MBR (don't know how, check the handbook). Then you emerge sync and get the latest kernel. I don't know if it's in portage yet, check packages.gentoo.org first.

I'm sure someone, sooner or later, will make a new livecd whith the new kernel. This will solve the PATA problem for good  :Smile: 

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## freelight

I'm quite sure I installed it on the MBR.

I installed Grub 1.94, it throws me the rescue shell and tells me that device hd0 isn't recognized. I'm beginning to suspect that my device.map is incorrect. Could somebody with the same board and a working Grub post their device.map?

My IDE drive is recognized as /dev/hdh when I boot the Gentoo LiveCD with all-generic-ide, so my device.map says:

(hd0) /dev/hdh

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## Tom17

I had entirely NO luck with getting grub to work from the JMicron PATA controller on this board.

I had 2 new SATA drives that I was planning to use as a RAID1 array and continue to use my old PATA drive as a boot drive but had to change my plans and use one of my SATA drives as a boot disk.

No matter what I did, I could not get grub to give me so much as a CLI on that controller. I guess grub does not yet recognise it  :Sad: 

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## odegard

Change the device.map to 

(hd0)   /dev/hda

and try again.

When you install with all-generic-ide your diskdrive get a weird device-letter, this is known, so you need to fix it manually after install. Remember, there is GRUB (grub.conf) and there is fstab. I struggled with booting, did lots of things in the kernel, grub etc. when it finally dawned on me that fstab had the wrong boot-drive  :Smile: 

I suspect though that you won't be able to boot linux since recent kernels have a bug regarding the JMicron controller. That's why I suggested you'd install the very newest kernel released today 2.6.18 final as this one has the fix.

So, check first if hda solves the Grub problem, and if the kernel refuses to boot, install the newest version. I feel confident that this should solve your problems.

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## Tom17

For me, GRUB would not recognise the JMicron PATA drive as hd0, hda or any other hdx...

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## freelight

Same here, no luck with Grub with (hd0) /dev/hda. I did however install lilo, and it starts to boot Linux, but it throws a kernel panic saying it's unable to mount the filesystem.

I'm using the latest no-sources kernel, which has the JMicron patches. I'll update to the 2.6.18 final kernel and try again, but the no-sources kernel should have worked (unless I'm doing something wrong), since I got a LiveCD with that kernel that didn't require me to pass the all-generic-ide parameter.

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## aBs0lut30

Just got my P5B, should have read this post first  :Razz: , anyway, i have got the 2006.1 liveCD and run it with the all-generic-ide and i get into the boot, but it just hangs on "Regenerate ld.so.cache" Any ideas? no SATA drives in it, just IDE...

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## odegard

I also used irqpoll to get my cd-drive to work (installing on SATA). So

on boot:

gentoo all-generic-ide irqpoll

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## aBs0lut30

Well, i finally got past the ld.so.cache thing, have to press print screen as soon as it pops up and it gets me by it, but when i get further, like to loading X it just hangs there. With or without the irqpoll switch. any tips?

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