Greetings: I am considering to build a new Linux box to replace my present one, based upon an Asus A7N8X motherboard and a Western Digital Raptor 10krpm serial ATA hard drive WD740GD or WD360GD. I am currently running 8.1, have a box of 8.2, but haven't yet purchased 9.0. From what I understand the 9.0 version still uses the 2.4.21 kernel. I am not sure if this supports SATA or not. I haven't found the WD drives in the SuSE hardware database. Can I be confident that the SATA drives and interface on this mobo will work in Suse 9.0, 8.2, or 8.1, or that there is a proven way to make it work? Thanks. -- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
Hello Chris, (Sorry about the direct reply) Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 5:59:08 PM, you wrote: CC> Greetings: CC> I am considering to build a new Linux box to replace my present one, CC> based upon an Asus A7N8X motherboard and a Western Digital Raptor 10krpm CC> serial ATA hard drive WD740GD or WD360GD. CC> I am currently running 8.1, have a box of 8.2, but haven't yet purchased CC> 9.0. From what I understand the 9.0 version still uses the 2.4.21 CC> kernel. I am not sure if this supports SATA or not. I haven't found CC> the WD drives in the SuSE hardware database. CC> Can I be confident that the SATA drives and interface on this mobo will CC> work in Suse 9.0, 8.2, or 8.1, or that there is a proven way to make it CC> work? I'm using a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (Sil3112a controller - same as the A7N8X, correct?), with two WD2000JD 200GB SATA hdds w/o too many issues. AFAIK, the ICH5 SATA controller is not supported under the 2.4.21/22 production kernels. However, initial support is available in the 2.6 kernels from what I've read. A few issues that I've encountered while using this box and the SI bus: 1) HW Raid Support is not available (unless you use Suse 8.x, RH 8.x, or another older version of a distro that SI has posted binary drivers for). 2) Max speed I've obtained from these drives using hdparm -Tt is: Timing buffer-cache reads: 3928 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1964.98 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.03 seconds = 55.37 MB/sec 2a) Kernel 2.6.0-0 dropped the disk read perf to ~30 MB/sec. 3) I have to force-enable DMA on these drives using the /etc/sysconfig/hardware file. Using hdparm -d1X66 is a "pot shot" at best and caused me hard lockups at least 50% of the time unless I was in single user mode (init 5 raised the lockup rate to >90%). 4) MD raid support using these drives is flaky at best. An improper shutdown would require a rebuilding of each array manually, and often caused the drives to throw timeout errors upon reboot. Although, I'm now seeing "lost interrupt" errors after reverting to a non-raid setup, so I may have a hardware issue. About to test the fault tolerance of the reiserfs w/o raid on the Sil3112 bus now. That is my experience so far. IMO, SATA in Linux is not ready for prime-time, unfortunately (at least when using consumer-level hardware). -- Best regards, Brian Curtis
/snip/
I'm using a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (Sil3112a controller - same as the A7N8X, correct?), with two WD2000JD 200GB SATA hdds w/o too many issues.
AFAIK, the ICH5 SATA controller is not supported under the 2.4.21/22 production kernels. However, initial support is available in the 2.6 kernels from what I've read.
A few issues that I've encountered while using this box and the SI bus:
1) HW Raid Support is not available (unless you use Suse 8.x, RH 8.x, or another older version of a distro that SI has posted binary drivers for).
2) Max speed I've obtained from these drives using hdparm -Tt is: Timing buffer-cache reads: 3928 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1964.98 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.03 seconds = 55.37 MB/sec
2a) Kernel 2.6.0-0 dropped the disk read perf to ~30 MB/sec.
3) I have to force-enable DMA on these drives using the /etc/sysconfig/hardware file. Using hdparm -d1X66 is a "pot shot" at best and caused me hard lockups at least 50% of the time unless I was in single user mode (init 5 raised the lockup rate to >90%).
4) MD raid support using these drives is flaky at best. An improper shutdown would require a rebuilding of each array manually, and often caused the drives to throw timeout errors upon reboot. Although, I'm now seeing "lost interrupt" errors after reverting to a non-raid setup, so I may have a hardware issue. About to test the fault tolerance of the reiserfs w/o raid on the Sil3112 bus now.
That is my experience so far. IMO, SATA in Linux is not ready for prime-time, unfortunately (at least when using consumer-level hardware).
-- Best regards, Brian Curtis
I wish I would have known some of this a couple of weeks ago when I built almost the same system w/ seagate drives. The Gigabyte GA-8KNXP rocks! Runs like a champ but the proud new owner wanted xp. Oh well. I also noticed on the board that the 6 phase power conditioner DOES NOT work with Antec conditioning power supplies. There is something with the phasing of the power. The solution is to remove the cool little on board conditioner. Might not work with some of the other conditioning power supplies either. Haven't had a chance to try any of them yet. Hope I didn't hijack the thread. Thought I would try to save someone a headache. will
On Wednesday 07 January 2004 00:48, Brian Curtis wrote:
Hello Chris,
(Sorry about the direct reply)
Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 5:59:08 PM, you wrote:
CC> Greetings:
CC> I am considering to build a new Linux box to replace my present one, CC> based upon an Asus A7N8X motherboard and a Western Digital Raptor 10krpm CC> serial ATA hard drive WD740GD or WD360GD.
CC> I am currently running 8.1, have a box of 8.2, but haven't yet purchased CC> 9.0. From what I understand the 9.0 version still uses the 2.4.21 CC> kernel. I am not sure if this supports SATA or not. I haven't found CC> the WD drives in the SuSE hardware database.
CC> Can I be confident that the SATA drives and interface on this mobo will CC> work in Suse 9.0, 8.2, or 8.1, or that there is a proven way to make it CC> work?
I'm using a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (Sil3112a controller - same as the A7N8X, correct?), with two WD2000JD 200GB SATA hdds w/o too many issues.
AFAIK, the ICH5 SATA controller is not supported under the 2.4.21/22 production kernels. However, initial support is available in the 2.6 kernels from what I've read.
A few issues that I've encountered while using this box and the SI bus:
1) HW Raid Support is not available (unless you use Suse 8.x, RH 8.x, or another older version of a distro that SI has posted binary drivers for).
2) Max speed I've obtained from these drives using hdparm -Tt is: Timing buffer-cache reads: 3928 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1964.98 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.03 seconds = 55.37 MB/sec
2a) Kernel 2.6.0-0 dropped the disk read perf to ~30 MB/sec.
3) I have to force-enable DMA on these drives using the /etc/sysconfig/hardware file. Using hdparm -d1X66 is a "pot shot" at best and caused me hard lockups at least 50% of the time unless I was in single user mode (init 5 raised the lockup rate to >90%).
4) MD raid support using these drives is flaky at best. An improper shutdown would require a rebuilding of each array manually, and often caused the drives to throw timeout errors upon reboot. Although, I'm now seeing "lost interrupt" errors after reverting to a non-raid setup, so I may have a hardware issue. About to test the fault tolerance of the reiserfs w/o raid on the Sil3112 bus now.
That is my experience so far. IMO, SATA in Linux is not ready for prime-time, unfortunately (at least when using consumer-level hardware).
-- Best regards, Brian Curtis
I'm using the ASUS P4P800 deluxe with 2 samsung sata 160 GB drives. Works fine. It seems to have the ICH5 SATA controller (mentioned above) as well. The trick is that the BIOS of the ASUS P4P800 offers a "compatibility" mode, where the 2 SATA ports are presented to the OS as one of the IDE controllers. You loose one of them, either the primary or the secondary IDE controller (your choice), which gets disabled, and therefore the OS sees the 2 SATA ports at its place. So you can have dvd and cdrecorder as hda and hdb, and the SATA drives then as hdc and hdd. This should do it as long as we wait for SuSE to ship a 2.6 kernel. Haven't done any benchmarks, but it seems to be as fast as I expected. Regards, Matt
participants (4)
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Brian Curtis -
Chris Carlen -
Matt T. -
will