Dear listers, I got SuSELinux9.2 for Japanese before the year end, and some bad experiences folloed. (1) The media is a Double layer. Unfortunately, my old DVD rom cannot read it properly. So, I had to buy new ones with DVD+R DL capabilities. One of them, NEC, however, cannot read 64bit distribution. At the beginning of installation, I see something to the effect that I am going to install 32bit linux onto 64bit machine!? On the second DVD+R DL, Plextor, I checked if I can read it. After confirming the media can be read properly, I created duplicates. A funny thing is the duplicate can be read properly on the NEC drive!? (2) I installed 9.2 on to EPoX 9NDA3+, with FX55, 2GB, and a single Seagate 160GB SATA. The machine has been running properly for a month or so as a FreeBSD5.3 diskless cluster. But, I have observed system freezes several times already with SuSE Linux 9.2. # An SATA drive is now connected to the SATA3 connector. I wonder if somebody can tell me a success story with a similar setup. Thanks for your attention. yoriaki fujimori
Yoriaki FUJIMORI <fujimori@ns.fujimori.cache.waseda.ac.jp> writes:
Dear listers, I got SuSELinux9.2 for Japanese before the year end, and some bad experiences folloed.
(1) The media is a Double layer. Unfortunately, my old DVD rom cannot read it properly. So, I had to buy new ones with DVD+R DL capabilities. One of them, NEC, however, cannot read 64bit distribution. At the beginning of installation, I see something to the effect that I am going to install 32bit linux onto 64bit machine!?
This looks strange - this is the initial program that is always run independend of architecture.
On the second DVD+R DL, Plextor, I checked if I can read it. After confirming the media can be read properly, I created duplicates. A funny thing is the duplicate can be read properly on the NEC drive!?
(2) I installed 9.2 on to EPoX 9NDA3+, with FX55, 2GB, and a single Seagate 160GB SATA. The machine has been running properly for a month or so as a FreeBSD5.3 diskless cluster. But, I have observed system freezes several times already with SuSE Linux 9.2. # An SATA drive is now connected to the SATA3 connector.
I advice to run the YaST Online Update and install the latest kernel. We have fixed a number of issues including some critical security holes, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
Thanks for your responce. I did online update soon after the initial installation. So, I guess I am running the latest kernel from SuSE. My tentative solution to stabilize the system is to use a PCI-sata card. After connecting the sata drive to the card, the system seems to be solid. yoriaki fujimori
On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 12:29:04AM +0900, Yoriaki FUJIMORI wrote:
Thanks for your responce.
I did online update soon after the initial installation. So, I guess I am running the latest kernel from SuSE.
My tentative solution to stabilize the system is to use a PCI-sata card. After connecting the sata drive to the card, the system seems to be solid.
Can you post hwinfo output? I'm just curious what SATA controller your mainboard has. -Andi
Torsdag 06 januar 2005 17:29 skrev Andi Kleen:
On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 12:29:04AM +0900, Yoriaki FUJIMORI wrote:
Thanks for your responce.
I did online update soon after the initial installation. So, I guess I am running the latest kernel from SuSE.
My tentative solution to stabilize the system is to use a PCI-sata card. After connecting the sata drive to the card, the system seems to be solid.
Can you post hwinfo output? I'm just curious what SATA controller your mainboard has.
-Andi
It seems that SuSE 9.2 has a few issues regarding SATA controllers !! Findings until now on MSI 7025 Board. - Doesn't get the 3'rd and 4'th working allthough it tries. - SATA II 150 TX4 from Promise doesn't play along (I accept that for now) - Have bought a SATA I 150 TX4 but I fear that I'm not gonna waste time on that with SuSE 9.2 but with Gentoo that does get it with the 3'rd and 4'th SATA device on the motherboard for starters ;-) My patience is getting tested heavily at present with SuSE ;-)
It seems that SuSE 9.2 has a few issues regarding SATA controllers !!
Support for many SATA controllers is still somewhat bleeding edge because the drivers tend to be still in development and the chip vendors still often release new chips with different quirks. Not everything was supported well in 2.6.8. If you want you can try a newer KOTD kernel from ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/x86_64/ which is based on newer mainline with newer drivers (but no guarantee that it works at all, e.g. similar as in gentoo) -Andi
Þann Föstudagur 07 janúar 2005 17:10 skrifaði Andi Kleen:
Support for many SATA controllers is still somewhat bleeding edge because the drivers tend to be still in development and the chip vendors still often release new chips with different quirks. Not everything was supported well in 2.6.8. If you want you can try a newer KOTD kernel from ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/x86_64/ which is based on newer mainline with newer drivers (but no guarantee that it works at all, e.g. similar as in gentoo)
Maybe I'm missing something, but wasn't SATA supposed to be the kind that didn't need any "new" drivers, because it was general ATA based? So, that all general ATA drivers should actually work for SATA?
Fredag 07 januar 2005 17:33 skrev Örn Einar Hansen:
Þann Föstudagur 07 janúar 2005 17:10 skrifaði Andi Kleen:
Support for many SATA controllers is still somewhat bleeding edge because the drivers tend to be still in development and the chip vendors still often release new chips with different quirks. Not everything was supported well in 2.6.8. If you want you can try a newer KOTD kernel from ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/x86_64/ which is based on newer mainline with newer drivers (but no guarantee that it works at all, e.g. similar as in gentoo)
Maybe I'm missing something, but wasn't SATA supposed to be the kind that didn't need any "new" drivers, because it was general ATA based? So, that all general ATA drivers should actually work for SATA?
Well I think the "problem" is that they're trying to figure out where to put it (modulewise long term). And then there's the problem of different vendors pulling in each their direction and the linux developteams trying to figure/sort it all out ;-) So it's a little trial and error and saving some hardware for later use ;-)
On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 05:33:31PM +0100, ?rn Einar Hansen wrote:
?ann F?studagur 07 jan?ar 2005 17:10 skrifa?i Andi Kleen:
Support for many SATA controllers is still somewhat bleeding edge because the drivers tend to be still in development and the chip vendors still often release new chips with different quirks. Not everything was supported well in 2.6.8. If you want you can try a newer KOTD kernel from ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/x86_64/ which is based on newer mainline with newer drivers (but no guarantee that it works at all, e.g. similar as in gentoo)
Maybe I'm missing something, but wasn't SATA supposed to be the kind that didn't need any "new" drivers, because it was general ATA based? So, that all general ATA drivers should actually work for SATA?
No SATA controller interfaces vary quite a lot. Far more than with PATA. There is a new AHCI interface standard now, but as far as I know only two vendors follow it and even they have some subtle differences. -Andi
Andi Kleen wrote:
It seems that SuSE 9.2 has a few issues regarding SATA controllers !!
Support for many SATA controllers is still somewhat bleeding edge because the drivers tend to be still in development and the chip vendors still often release new chips with different quirks. Not everything was supported well in 2.6.8. If you want you can try a newer KOTD kernel from ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/x86_64/ which is based on newer mainline with newer drivers (but no guarantee that it works at all, e.g. similar as in gentoo)
I have a system that uses the ata_piix driver. with SuSE 9.1 it will actually detect and run on this system fine, with the SuSE 9.2 install CD it doesn't even see the drive. when i custom compile the SuSE kernel it will see the drive but it has some issues reading the ext3 journal so it comes up in read only mode... i haven't had time to compare the differences in the driver, but it does seem that some vanilla kernel sources work (sorry don't know which ones because i didn't test that part). so it seems that there are some regressions in SuSE's SATA support for me. peter
so it seems that there are some regressions in SuSE's SATA support for me.
Things are not always as them seem. The SATA drivers in 9.2 are just a snapshot of the ones that were in the vanilla kernel at the time the release was frozen (there are some small exceptions to this, but in general it's true) As I said this stuff is still all in development, and when things are developed and still fresh there are regressions now and then. You'll need to live with that for now. If new vanilla works better then the next SUSE release should too (assuming there are no new regressions again or the regressions are caught in time) Another issue is that motherboard and BIOS vendors often add bugs and quirks when they integrate chips, so it's often the case that even when there is a generic chipset driver for a specific chip available the bug workarounds needed to get the devices on a particular mainboard actually running may not be in yet etc. Problems can also be caused by poor cabling or other hardware issues. For example a newer driver may drive a HD more aggressively and then cause a marginary setup that barely worked before to fall over (this problem is fortunately much less severe in SATA than it was in PATA) -Andi
Hi Andi, Andi Kleen wrote:
The SATA drivers in 9.2 are just a snapshot of the ones that were in the vanilla kernel at the time the release was frozen (there are some small exceptions to this, but in general it's true)
that's good to know. it means that if i get time i should just be able to patch something in from upstream.
Another issue is that motherboard and BIOS vendors often add bugs and quirks when they integrate chips, so it's often the case that even when there is a generic chipset driver for a specific chip available the bug workarounds needed to get the devices on a particular mainboard actually running may not be in yet etc.
i'd agree with this if earlier versions of the SuSE kernel didn't work on exactly the same hardware.
Problems can also be caused by poor cabling or other hardware issues. For example a newer driver may drive a HD more aggressively and then cause a marginary setup that barely worked before to fall over (this problem is fortunately much less severe in SATA than it was in PATA)
this may be a likely candidate. for the moment we've switched back to using a standard PATA drive since it doesn't show the same problems... peter
participants (6)
-
Andi Kleen -
Andreas Jaeger -
Johan Nielsen -
Peter Buckingham -
Yoriaki FUJIMORI -
Örn Einar Hansen