[Neuromancer]

I finished building a PC for a friends grandson.

Abit AB9 QuadGT
E6400 C2D
2x1GB DDR2 667
X1900XT
2x250GB WD SATA2
MadDog 16xDVDRW (PATA)
Enermax 535W PSU
Antec 900


I tried installing Mandriva 2008 and Ubuntu 7.1 both 64 and 32 bit versions.

In both cases, the live CDs install with no problem. (Actually not true, I think the Ubuntu 64 would not install at all IIRC). But neither will detect hard drives.

In booting straight to install I get to the storage controller section it identifies the ICH8 family chipset and the jmicron chipset correctly, then posts "no hard drives detected" or something of that nature.

I worked on this for 2 days before giving up and leaving XP on the system all by its lonesome.


Normally when I instal linux its on older hardware (although, technically the p965 chipset IS older hardware) so most of the problems have been sorted out. In this case, the only solution was to disable the jmicron controller and then you can install Linux. However this means no IDE channel. So... this cant just be limited to the AB9 series of Abit boards can it?

I am going to be building a linux only PC for my friend soon, and want to have the latest hardware I can manage so that it lasts him at least 5 years.

With certain things (like TV tuner) I know that I will have to research whichever model is best bang for the buck once I start building it, but something as universal as a motherboard I would expect it to be more supported.

Where do you go to check hardware compatability for linux? I checked a couple of compatability lists when I ran into the problem, and was shocked at the woefully incomplete data. Mandriva I think listed maybe 6 motherboards and ubuntu has no list at all that I found. Just lots of posts about a board or two.

Obviously I want to make things as smooth as possile for this guy, he only wants Mandriva as that is what he is used to (that and unix), and it will provide a seamless transition from his older PC, just with more power for CAD, compressing and DVD encoding. Plus I want to run a HT front end on it for his large screen TV, but I could actually just swap his old PC to HT duty.

Any thought on how to avoid buying the wrong hardware in the future? Without having to pick out a motherboard from newegg and then going and searching that model on the mandriva forums?

Thanks

[seth556]

Originally Posted by Neur0mancer

I tried installing Mandriva 2008 and Ubuntu 7.1 both 64 and 32 bit versions.

In both cases, the live CDs install with no problem. (Actually not true, I think the Ubuntu 64 would not install at all IIRC). But neither will detect hard drives.

How did you install without detecting a hard drive? Or did you just boot off the live-cd?

[CJ145]

By chance are those WD's configured in the Intel matrix raid? To use the (fake) motherboard raid you need to install DMRaid on the Ubuntu live cd and do a manual install.

If Linux is the only thing going on those hdd's the best thing to do is disable the BIOS raid (Intel software raid) and use Linux software raid using mdadm. This will work out of the box using the Ubuntu 7.10 amd64 Alternate cd. It does not boot to a GUI but is a nice text based installed.

Your third option is to use a real hardware raid solution, but this is the most expensive way.

Either way you can find guides on the Ubuntu forums, but the first option is much harder to do.

[Neuromancer]

No raid, and drives on both controllers were set to IDE mode


Seth... I did not install linux. I installed windows. Linux would not install on the quadGT. (yes.. i ran Live with no problem)

[splat]

a little old, but here is a post at phoronix that talks about the ab9 and linux compatibility:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=699&num=1

and one post i found in the ubuntu forum: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=575898