Dear list, I've had a delivery of some new hardware components, including everything but the kitchen sink - a new mainboard, CPU, video card, memory, CD-RW, and floppy drive. I'm keeping my HDD from my previous set-up. This is my first hardware upgrade since I've been using Linux (SuSE 8.0), and to tell you the truth I'm a bit wary. All the new components should be compatible with Linux (see my previous post), but I don't really understand how hardware setup, configuration and drivers work in SuSE. Yes, I'm of the lazy generation where one grew up just waiting for Windows to auto-detect the new hardware, try to find a driver, and copy one off a disc where required. :-( I take it the way to go is to put together the hardware, start up the system, and then use YaST to configure the new components? Will there be drivers required (e.g., for the ATI Radeon 7000 video card) that might not be immediately available and need to be downloaded from the web? Where is a good place to start looking for drivers? I'm very grateful for any help and tips you can offer. Dennis
Dear list,
I've had a delivery of some new hardware components, including everything but the kitchen sink - a new mainboard, CPU, video card, memory, CD-RW, and floppy drive. I'm keeping my HDD from my previous set-up.
This is my first hardware upgrade since I've been using Linux (SuSE 8.0), and to tell you the truth I'm a bit wary. All the new components should be compatible with Linux (see my previous post), but I don't really understand how hardware setup, configuration and drivers work in SuSE. Yes, I'm of the lazy generation where one grew up just waiting for Windows to auto-detect the new hardware, try to find a driver, and copy one off a disc where required. :-(
I take it the way to go is to put together the hardware, start up the system, and then use YaST to configure the new components? Will there be drivers required (e.g., for the ATI Radeon 7000 video card) that might not be immediately available and need to be downloaded from the web? Where is a good place to start looking for drivers?
I'm very grateful for any help and tips you can offer.
Dennis In SuSE 8.0 and upwards the hardware is normal detect automatic without any
On Friday 04 April 2003 13:02, Dennis Nigbur wrote: problems. You should be finished and up and running within a 1/2 hour when everything goes okay. Have fun ............. :-) Wins hands down over windows. -- ---------------------------------------------------- This mail has been scanned for virus by AntiVir for UNIX Copyright (C) 1994-2003 by H+BEDV Datentechnik GmbH.
On Friday 04 April 2003 13:23, Ian David Laws wrote: <snip>
In SuSE 8.0 and upwards the hardware is normal detect automatic without any problems. You should be finished and up and running within a 1/2 hour when everything goes okay.
Have fun ............. :-) Wins hands down over windows.
The catch is : if SuSE recognizes the hardware. For newer hardware that might not be the case. I recently bought a new PC, and I gave up installing SuSE 8.1 Pro on it, so I'm waiting for the next SuSE Pro to arrive in my mail box. Default install of SuSE 8.1 will just leave a blank screen fairly early in the install (true for XFS 4800SE graphics card, as well as Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 Pro, on a Asus P4G8X Deluxe motherboard using 1003 bios). A textual install (that is quite nice) of SuSE works, but sax2 leaves something to be desired, I guess. On my old machine (this one) I run SuSE 8.1, but on the new one runs Redhat 9, but next SuSE will be added. Cheers Sigfred
* Sigfred Haversen (functor@myrealbox.com) [030404 10:29]: -> ->Default install of SuSE 8.1 will just leave a blank screen fairly early in the ->install (true for XFS 4800SE graphics card, as well as Hercules 3D Prophet ->9500 Pro, on a Asus P4G8X Deluxe motherboard using 1003 bios). A textual ->install (that is quite nice) of SuSE works, but sax2 leaves something to be ->desired, I guess. Yes, but did this have issues because of the motherboard or because of the very new video card? Did you have any problems getting 8.1 on this machine with this motherboard? I'm thinking of buying one of these later today and putting the P4 2.8ghz CPU on it with DDR400 RAM. If it's a video card issue..I'm not worried because I'm keeping my Radeon 7500 DDR card for now. If it's a " this motherboard has issues with 8.0/8.1" then I may hold off. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I'll tell you what you should see.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 04 April 2003 12:51 pm, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
* Sigfred Haversen (functor@myrealbox.com) [030404 10:29]: -> ->Default install of SuSE 8.1 will just leave a blank screen fairly early in the ->install (true for XFS 4800SE graphics card, as well as Hercules 3D Prophet ->9500 Pro, on a Asus P4G8X Deluxe motherboard using 1003 bios). A textual ->install (that is quite nice) of SuSE works, but sax2 leaves something to be ->desired, I guess.
Yes, but did this have issues because of the motherboard or because of the very new video card? Did you have any problems getting 8.1 on this machine with this motherboard? I'm thinking of buying one of these later today and putting the P4 2.8ghz CPU on it with DDR400 RAM. If it's a video card issue..I'm not worried because I'm keeping my Radeon 7500 DDR card for now. If it's a " this motherboard has issues with 8.0/8.1" then I may hold off.
One of the problems I've noticed with sax2 is not so much related to video cards but video cards and monitor inconjuction with each others. Case in point. If I setup my Nvidia GF3-ti200 with new drivers then I often times must set up the monitor again. This is especially true in the later versions of sax2. I will find that I get a black screen in many instances and have to boot to init 3 in order to use my system. I also notice that everytime I enter sax2 it tells me I have an "unknown monitor" type and I have to default to VESA modes. I find this particularly frustrating now due to the fact the XF86 4.3 has my "specific" monitor in the data base (Samsung SyncMaster 753DF/T) but I have yet to get sax2 to cooperate. And on occasion If I get the monitor to recognize correctly then the video card drivers may often kludge.... very frustrating. I often have to edit the XF86Config file by hand. I realize that your using a ATI Radeon 9500 Pro card and I suspect the current version of XF86 default with SuSE 8.1 may not play well with this per se. Upgrading to XF86 4.3 should be done carefully and with a bit of research related to fonts, and other issues some have been having (especially I would think given your mobo). Just my $0.02 :) Cheers, Curtis. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+jd5k7WVLiDrqeksRAt7gAKDJtAZvxJ81Tt4YNOHv/OwjbthAKgCgxnCO Ea5RIENZcS72b4oxch6QaTQ= =aMIp -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Friday 04 April 2003 21:34, Curtis Rey wrote: <snip of reply>
One of the problems I've noticed with sax2 is not so much related to video cards but video cards and monitor inconjuction with each others. Case in point. If I setup my Nvidia GF3-ti200 with new drivers then I often times must set up the monitor again. This is especially true in the later versions of sax2. I will find that I get a black screen in many instances and have to boot to init 3 in order to use my system. I also notice that everytime I enter sax2 it tells me I have an "unknown monitor" type and I have to default to VESA modes. I find this particularly frustrating now due to the fact the XF86 4.3 has my "specific" monitor in the data base (Samsung SyncMaster 753DF/T) but I have yet to get sax2 to cooperate. And on occasion If I get the monitor to recognize correctly then the video card drivers may often kludge.... very frustrating. I often have to edit the XF86Config file by hand. I realize that your using a ATI Radeon 9500 Pro card and I suspect the current version of XF86 default with SuSE 8.1 may not play well with this per se. Upgrading to XF86 4.3 should be done carefully and with a bit of research related to fonts, and other issues some have been having (especially I would think given your mobo).
Just my $0.02 :)
Cheers, Curtis.
My experience is that if the graphics card could not be detected, then monitor detection is problematic (if it's connected to that card, though). To Redhat's credit, their hardware detection works better for me than SuSE's, and that includes my old PC. When SuSe is running, it's very nice, though. The Radeon 9x00 series has 2D accelleration in Xfree 4.3, while only Radeon 9000 has good 3D support, as far as I can rememeber. ATI used to be more picky regarding "built by" as opposed to "powered by". Cheers Sigfred
On Friday 04 April 2003 20:51, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
* Sigfred Haversen (functor@myrealbox.com) [030404 10:29]: -> ->Default install of SuSE 8.1 will just leave a blank screen fairly early in the ->install (true for XFS 4800SE graphics card, as well as Hercules 3D Prophet ->9500 Pro, on a Asus P4G8X Deluxe motherboard using 1003 bios). A textual ->install (that is quite nice) of SuSE works, but sax2 leaves something to be ->desired, I guess.
Yes, but did this have issues because of the motherboard or because of the very new video card? Did you have any problems getting 8.1 on this machine with this motherboard? I'm thinking of buying one of these later today and putting the P4 2.8ghz CPU on it with DDR400 RAM. If it's a video card issue..I'm not worried because I'm keeping my Radeon 7500 DDR card for now. If it's a " this motherboard has issues with 8.0/8.1" then I may hold off.
My new PC is just that, just new, I'm afraid :-) I can't, however, determine exactly what made the installation of SuSE 8.1 fail in graphic install. I did, though, try two very different graphic cards. It's my hunch that Redhat does something smart during graphical install. For the fun of it, I tried to install redhat 8.0, which starts nicely in graphical mode (after some funny graphics). Redhat 9 works very well in install (no 'funny' graphics). Mandrake 9.1 thinks that a kernel panic is in order (efter pressing 'Enter' for installation') while text mode works very well. So after textual install I can configure my graphic card and montitor. Mandrake 9.1 desktop is very very nice looking, and I still have my functional KDE desktop :-) Mandrake 9.0 also likes to panic..... I've not tried to do a textual install using that version on my 'new' PC. Knoppix 3.2 (date 28 march 2003) have a "blank" screen for a while, but then it recovers. Knoppix is my friend :----) Used 'wrong' keyboard while typing passwd for root during installation of one Linux distribution, and could recover, so to speak :-) Windows 2000 Pro installs very nicely. I don't have Windows XP, soI can't tell you how that would fare. And yes, my motherboard has serial ATA, but since I've don't have that type of drives, I can't test it, though. Same for firewire and USB 2.0. Inboard LAN is detected on most Linix distributions, after some pain, though. All in all, wating for the next SuSE release. Cheers Sigfred
On Friday 04 April 2003 01:30 pm, Sigfred Haversen wrote:
On Friday 04 April 2003 13:23, Ian David Laws wrote: <snip>
In SuSE 8.0 and upwards the hardware is normal detect automatic without any problems. You should be finished and up and running within a 1/2 hour when everything goes okay.
Have fun ............. :-) Wins hands down over windows.
The catch is : if SuSE recognizes the hardware.
For newer hardware that might not be the case. I recently bought a new PC, and I gave up installing SuSE 8.1 Pro on it, so I'm waiting for the next SuSE Pro to arrive in my mail box.
Default install of SuSE 8.1 will just leave a blank screen fairly early in the install (true for XFS 4800SE graphics card, as well as Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 Pro, on a Asus P4G8X Deluxe motherboard using 1003 bios). A textual install (that is quite nice) of SuSE works, but sax2 leaves something to be desired, I guess.
On my old machine (this one) I run SuSE 8.1, but on the new one runs Redhat 9, but next SuSE will be added.
Cheers Sigfred ====================
Sigfred, This sounds like more of a hardware problem than software. First of all, XFree86 4.2 does not support the ATI 9500 cards, except maybe in text mode or vesa mode. You will need v4.3 to do better or ATI's own binary drivers. Second, in my opinion, the Asus motherboard is not one of your best choices now. At one point I suppose they were and many people purchased them, but like the bad quality of Quantum hard drives are now, so are the Asus motherboards. Others may be using them and having good luck, I can't say about that, but I don't recommend nor sell them to any of my customers. If you have RH9 installed on it and running graphics, I suspect you will also find XFree86 4.3 there also. Patrick -- --- KMail v1.5.9.1i --- SuSE Linux Pro v8.1 --- Registered Linux User #225206 On any other day, that might seem strange...
On Friday 04 April 2003 12:02, Dennis Nigbur wrote:
Dear list,
I've had a delivery of some new hardware components, including everything but the kitchen sink - a new mainboard, CPU, video card, memory, CD-RW, and floppy drive. I'm keeping my HDD from my previous set-up.
This sounds more like a new machine than a h/ware upgrade! To be honest, I'd back up the old setup and re-install from scratch. Although you should be able to boot to a text console (in principle) there's likely to be too many changes for it to be worthwhile. Dylan -- It is a dark day...
On 4 Apr 2003 at 12:36, Dylan wrote:
This sounds more like a new machine than a h/ware upgrade! To be honest, I'd back up the old setup and re-install from scratch. Although you should be able to boot to a text console (in principle) there's likely to be too many changes for it to be worthwhile.
It is more like a new machine, just with the old hard-disk. I might eventually try a full re-install to tidy things up, but I don't think it's possible at the moment. Since I have no CD-writer or Zip drive at present (the CD-RW is part of the new combo after all), I can't see how I could back up everything before installing the new hardware. The only thing I could try if you think it really would be a better idea is to back up my Linux partition to the Windows partition of the hard drive, then assemble the hardware and re-install SuSE on the Linux partition, before moving the required backed-up data back into Linux. But is it worth the complication? Dennis
In a previous message, Dennis Nigbur wrote:
Since I have no CD-writer or Zip drive at present (the CD-RW is part of the new combo after all), I can't see how I could back up everything before installing the new hardware.
I'd strongly suggest installing the CD-writer first, backing at least your /home directory up to CD (probably archive it first, in order to preserve everything as it should be), and (if you have space and time) also /etc and some others that more knowledgeable people than I could suggest. Once you've done this, build the new computer, reformat and reinstall linux on the HD and then return the relevant config files and /home directory to the system.
The only thing I could try if you think it really would be a better idea is to back up my Linux partition to the Windows partition of the hard drive, then assemble the hardware and re-install SuSE on the Linux partition, before moving the required backed-up data back into Linux. But is it worth the complication?
Yes! The safety you get from this is well worth it. Tar everything and move it to the other partition, reformat and reinstall. If there's no space for this, do the important bits at least. If you have space, you could try resizing the partitions on the HD to allow you to back up your system to a new linux-format partition - this would probably be quicker than CD, wouldn't cause problems with symlinks being backed up to a FAT disk (does this work?) and saves CDs (you might fill a few of them if you have a large install). John -- John Pettigrew Headstrong Games john@headstrong-games.co.uk Fun : Strategy : Price http://www.headstrong-games.co.uk/ Board games that won't break the bank Valley of the Kings: ransack an ancient Egyptian tomb but beware of mummies!
On Friday 04 April 2003 15:02, Dennis Nigbur wrote:
On 4 Apr 2003 at 12:36, Dylan wrote:
This sounds more like a new machine than a h/ware upgrade! To be honest, I'd back up the old setup and re-install from scratch. Although you should be able to boot to a text console (in principle) there's likely to be too many changes for it to be worthwhile.
It is more like a new machine, just with the old hard-disk. I might eventually try a full re-install to tidy things up, but I don't think it's possible at the moment. Since I have no CD-writer or Zip drive at present (the CD-RW is part of the new combo after all), I can't see how I could back up everything before installing the new hardware.
The only thing I could try if you think it really would be a better idea is to back up my Linux partition to the Windows partition of the hard drive, then assemble the hardware and re-install SuSE on the Linux partition, before moving the required backed-up data back into Linux. But is it worth the complication?
Dennis Hi Why not install the CD-RW onto the old system do a back-up then you can build up the new system. --
This mail has been scanned for virus by AntiVir for UNIX Copyright (C) 1994-2003 by H+BEDV Datentechnik GmbH.
You guys are far too conservative. It'll work fine! Just make sure you are set to boot into TEXT mode, not graphical mode, before the switch. The Xserver may need some tweaking, which is hard to do when you can't see anything. On Friday 04 April 2003 08:33, Ian David Laws wrote:
On Friday 04 April 2003 15:02, Dennis Nigbur wrote:
On 4 Apr 2003 at 12:36, Dylan wrote:
This sounds more like a new machine than a h/ware upgrade! To be honest, I'd back up the old setup and re-install from scratch. Although you should be able to boot to a text console (in principle) there's likely to be too many changes for it to be worthwhile.
It is more like a new machine, just with the old hard-disk. I might eventually try a full re-install to tidy things up, but I don't think it's possible at the moment. Since I have no CD-writer or Zip drive at present (the CD-RW is part of the new combo after all), I can't see how I could back up everything before installing the new hardware.
The only thing I could try if you think it really would be a better idea is to back up my Linux partition to the Windows partition of the hard drive, then assemble the hardware and re-install SuSE on the Linux partition, before moving the required backed-up data back into Linux. But is it worth the complication?
Dennis
Hi Why not install the CD-RW onto the old system do a back-up then you can build up the new system.
* Paul Alfille (palfille@earthlink.net) [030404 19:32]: ->You guys are far too conservative. ->It'll work fine! ->Just make sure you are set to boot into TEXT mode, not ->graphical mode, before the switch. The Xserver may ->need some tweaking, which is hard to do when you ->can't see anything. Not to say what this person should or shouldn't do. But I just replaced my Duron 800mhz (A7V Asus) with an Asus P4PE with a 2.4ghz cpu and the only things I had to do was edit lilo to make sure then devices were correct and the fstab. It booted up fine the first time and has already burned 3 CD's and I'm compiling Kopete to see how fast it can do it compared to the Duron. All in all it was painless. BTW..this machine is running 8.0 with all the current patches. I can't believe how easy this was. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I'll tell you what you should see.
Well, this is now all done and dusted. I decided to back up my documents, mail and downloads as zipped archives on my old "spare" 1.7GB HDD, and completely re-install the rest. The first installation of SuSE 8.0 was my Linux newbie installation and got terribly cluttered as I was wildly trying things out with no coherent plan - I just thought the clean re-install would make sense and not be too difficult to do now, with not too many user-specific settings to be backed up. YaST2 recognised all the new hardware without a hitch, and I was up and running in no time at all. All I had to do was to configure my card modem (which of course isn't auto-detected), and off I go. In short, it's been a success story. And it's been worthwhile too - KDE starts up so much quicker, and so far everything seems to be exceptionally stable. Many thanks for all of your useful input. I really appreciate it. Dennis On 4 Apr 2003 at 20:21, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
* Paul Alfille (palfille@earthlink.net) [030404 19:32]: ->You guys are far too conservative. ->It'll work fine!
Not to say what this person should or shouldn't do. But I just replaced my Duron 800mhz (A7V Asus) with an Asus P4PE with a 2.4ghz cpu and the only things I had to do was edit lilo to make sure then devices were correct and the fstab. It booted up fine the first time
On Tuesday 08 April 2003 7:50 am, Dennis Nigbur wrote:
I just thought the clean re-install would make sense and not be too difficult to do now, with not too many user-specific settings to be backed up.
And of course you took good notes on all the various things you did to tweak the system, right? They'll be a life-saver for your next install. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 04/08/03 10:14 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Friends don't let friends drive naked."
*** Reply to message from Bruce Marshall
And of course you took good notes on all the various things you did to tweak the system, right? They'll be a life-saver for your next install.
oh good !! Now I'm not the only one to say that on this list <VBG> AndBTW , I'm stealing your tagline <G> -- j Afterthought : Jargon rules - ongoing dominance situation.
If buying an extra harddisk is an option, I think you should consider it. Make the new harddisk the "Master", and change the jumper settings on the old harddisk to be "slave". Install your preferred Linux on the new hard disk, and let the installation program mount the old partitions (read only if need be). You might consider adding the old harddisk _after_ a completed install and when you have a system running to your satisfaction on your "new" PC, though. Cheers Sigfred You should consider byuing an extra harddisk, and install on that one, and mount the old one hard disk. When I wanted to trye Linux at home last autumn, I got the foll On Friday 04 April 2003 15:02, Dennis Nigbur wrote:
On 4 Apr 2003 at 12:36, Dylan wrote:
This sounds more like a new machine than a h/ware upgrade! To be honest, I'd back up the old setup and re-install from scratch. Although you should be able to boot to a text console (in principle) there's likely to be too many changes for it to be worthwhile.
It is more like a new machine, just with the old hard-disk. I might eventually try a full re-install to tidy things up, but I don't think it's possible at the moment. Since I have no CD-writer or Zip drive at present (the CD-RW is part of the new combo after all), I can't see how I could back up everything before installing the new hardware.
The only thing I could try if you think it really would be a better idea is to back up my Linux partition to the Windows partition of the hard drive, then assemble the hardware and re-install SuSE on the Linux partition, before moving the required backed-up data back into Linux. But is it worth the complication?
Dennis
On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 13:02, Dennis Nigbur wrote:
Dear list,
I've had a delivery of some new hardware components, including everything but the kitchen sink - a new mainboard, CPU, video card, memory, CD-RW, and floppy drive. I'm keeping my HDD from my previous set-up.
This is a very late reply, but purely for insformation's sake. I did pretty much the same thing - new computer, old hard disk - a while ago while testing different things out. I booted my SuSE 8.0 Pro installation on no less than 9 very different computers. This exercise saw me running on Pentium I,II and III, AMD K6-2, Duron, Athlon and various Celerons. Graphics dards were nVidia TNT2 M64, TNT2 Vanta, various SiS cards, one older rage and a old PCI card (S3 virge I think). The last machine was a brand new AthlonXP 2000+, Gigabyte board with VIA KT400 chipset and Radeon 9000 ProII. With the exception of the radeon, the longest time spent configuring was on one of the SiS cards (6326) and that was only a couple of minutes. A couple clicks in Yast2 was all it took on all the machines. On the Radeon 9000 Yast configured the 2D side properly, but I didn't manage to install the driver from ATi. Didn't have a lot of time on this one. On two of the machines the BIOS couldn't pick up my 40gb hard disc, so I had to switch it to 33gb mode. Linux booted happily, windows broke. On the Pentium I the limit was someting like 8gb, so I had to make a bootstiffy and tell the bios that there's no hard disc. Besides that all was well. Eventually I upgraded my own machine from a Celeron 500 on a VIA based Gigabyte board, to an AthlonXP on VIA KT133a based Gigabyte board - still with the same old SuSE 8.0 Installation. I ran it for a bout two weeks more without any hassles at all - until I got my hands on SuSE 8.1. Bottom line is that SuSE and YAST is extremely cabable of handling new hardware. Just plug it in and fire up yast2. Hans
participants (12)
-
Ben Rosenberg -
Bruce Marshall -
Curtis Rey -
Dennis Nigbur -
Dylan -
H du Plooy -
Ian David Laws -
jfweber＠bellsouth.net -
John Pettigrew -
O'Smith -
Paul Alfille -
Sigfred Haversen