Core_2_Duo_Support

Differences between revisions 43 and 44
Revision 43 as of 2006-10-28 10:41:06
Size: 12777
Editor: dsl254-073-076
Comment:
Revision 44 as of 2006-10-29 07:22:51
Size: 13017
Editor: 59
Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 27: Line 27:
 My case : Asus P5b with kubuntu Edgy, it works fine when I use ubuntu defaults kernel. But it doesn't support Marvell Lan card. So i tried sk98lin driver Ubuntu freeze at boot randomly(sometime, it works fine with two marvell lan card.).

We want to be sure that Ubuntu is fully compatible with the new Intel Core 2 Duo Processors.

This is a page to track bugs and discussions related to supporting this.

Problems

Random Freezes on 965P motherboards

Hardware Affected

  • Asus P5B Deluxe (Motherboard)
  • Foxconn [exact model unspecified, probably P9657AA-8KS2H] (Motherboard)

Edgy/Kernel versions

  • This bug has been reported for Edgy (final)
  • Stock Kernels: 2.6.17-10-genersic, 2.6.17-10-386
  • Custom Kernels: 2.6.19-rc2-mm2 (compiled from kernel.org sources), 2.6.17-13 (compiled from Ubuntu sources)

Summary

Frequent random lockups/freezes with Edgy. Issue persists even when X11 is not running. No third party modules (i.e. no nvidia). No information on syslog prior to crash.

Workarounds

None. Need additional info. Please share your experiences on this.

  • My case : Asus P5b with kubuntu Edgy, it works fine when I use ubuntu defaults kernel. But it doesn't support Marvell Lan card. So i tried sk98lin driver Ubuntu freeze at boot randomly(sometime, it works fine with two marvell lan card.).

Notes

Hardware works fine in Windows.

See http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1671821#post1671821

APIC turned on in BIOS freezes system during boot

Hardware Affected

  • MSI MS-7235 P965 Neo Series (Motherboard)
  • Intel DG965OT (Motheboard) (Maybe more!)

When booting either stock (2.6.17-10-generic) or current (2.6.17.11-ubuntu1) kernels, system freezes after displaying

[17179572.068000] PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K,PNP0f13:PS2M] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12]

and before displaying

[17179572.080000] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12

if IOAPIC is turned on in BIOS. Turning off IOAPIC allows the system to boot without issues, but this turns off SMP, causing only one of the two cores of the CPU to be picked up by the kernel:

[17179571.520000] SMP motherboard not detected. [17179571.624000] Brought up 1 CPUs

Work-Arounds

  • Disabling legacy USB support (keyboard/mouse) appears to fix this problem in this particular case.

In the case of MSI MS-7235 P965 Neo, the only way to do so seems to set "USB Keyboard support" and "USB Keyboard support" settings to "Disabled"

Fixed in Dapper Status/Notes

Not fixed yet

Fixed in Edgy Status/Notes

Fixed in Edgy Eft beta/release candidate

Installer Freezes on Not Finding IDE CD/DVD-ROM Drive

I believe this is caused due to the Intel P965 chipset has no more integrated IDE channel, thus the motherboard usually has an additional chip onboard for an IDE channel. In the current Gigabyte (I got one of them) and ASUS (think they have it too) this is a JMicron JMB363, in Intel motherboards it's a Marvell 88SE6101 controller. Until very recently the kernel had a bug inside that made it unable to access the IDE/PATA channel. So If you have and IDE drive or HDD left you will not be able to use it.

I would guess most people have a SATA drive with such a new computer. The trick to it is then to avoid the PATA CDROM for installation (though the BIOS can boot off it). Utilising USB, you can do the following:

Either of these methods has worked for me just fine.

More Info

Hardware Affected

  • GIGABYTE GA-965P-DQ6 P965 775 (Motherboard), bsodmike (06-09-2006)
  • GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS4 P965 775 (Motherboard)
  • GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 P965 775 (Motherboard)
  • GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 P965 775 (Motherboard)
  • MSI MS-7235 P965 Neo Series (Motherboard)
  • ASUS P5B P965 Series (Motherboard)
  • ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (Motherboard)
  • Intel DP965LT (Motherboard)
  • Intel DG965SS (Motherboard)
  • Intel DG965WH (Motherboard)
  • Intel DG965OT (Motherboard)
  • Probably other Intel motherboards based on P965/G965/Q965 chipsets
  • ABIT AB9 Series (Motherboard)
  • ECS P965T-A (Motherboard)
  • Foxconn P9657AA-8EKRS2H (Motherboard)
  • Please add more Ubuntu Users

Fixed in Dapper Status/Notes

Not Yet

Fixed in Edgy Status/Notes

I tried Kubuntu Knot 2 tonight with no luck. It got to the start screen, and hit install and it freezes to a blank screen with a blinking cursor at the top left of the screen.

I've managed to get the edgy kernel to recognize my PATA drives by compiling in the disk controller modules and passing all-generic-ide at boot. I'm not sure yet if all of the ide modules have to be compiled in, or just ide-generic. From dmesg, it looks like ide-generic has to be initialized before anything else in order for this to work (which is why it can't be compiled as a module). Maybe somebody can figure out how to do this with the initrd, but for now compiling in ide-generic works for me. This works on 2.6.17.11, compiled from the git tree. I haven't tried the dapper kernel yet.

I tried Ubuntu Knot 3 ("Edgy Eft" - Alpha amd64 (20060915.1)) today with the "all-generic-ide" option without success. Unfortunately it seems that the patch from Alan Cox is not yet included in the kernel on the disc.

Work-Arounds

  • Connect IDE drive to SATA controller using a converter
  • Use USB-IDE adapter to connect IDE CDROM, and boot from regular installation CD.
  • USB enclosure for ATA drives
  • Network(PXE) installation
    • -- this requires another computer -- Many of the P965 mobos apparently use some Realtek Ethernet cards that aren't supported by the installer
      • workaround: get another PCI Ethernet card to install from
      • potential workaround (not tested): local network install
  • PCI/ATA controller card. I'm using a CMD649U chipset based card, although I can't seem to boot off the CD as isolinux brings up an error.
  • Boot from a working live-cd (e.g. [http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page System Rescue CD] or [http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/ Knoppix]) and install Ubuntu as described here: [http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apds03.html]

Success Stories

Story 1

I have managed to install Ubuntu Edgy Eft Knot 2 on my 965-based Core 2 Duo computer and I want to share my experiences. My computer has the following specs:

  • Asus P5B motherboard
  • Maxtor SATA II disc
  • Asus DVD-RW

For the installation, I have bought a SATA->IDE adapter from [http://www.conrad.de Conrad] (Art-Nr 974452 - 62) which worked for my Asus DVD-RW but not for my LG-DVD-RAM. On my board, there are 5 internal SATA connectors. One belongs to the JMicro controller and the other 4 to the ICH8 controller. Number 1 and 2 are red coloured and number 3 and 4 are black coloured. I have my harddisc connected to the first SATA port. In my case it was necessary to connect the CD/DVD drive to the second port and not to the third or fourth. In the BIOS, the IDE configuration had to be configured to Enhanced -> AHCI.

I tried the following CDs:

  • LIVE (pre) Knot3 (20060915.1) amd64 : a lot of bus errors, timeouts during boot up. It took about 10 minutes to boot, so I canceled.
  • LIVE Knot2 amd64 : the same as above
  • ALTERNATE Knot2 amd64 : Pressing F6 at the grub menu and adding "all-generic-ide irqpoll" had worked for me.

After the installation and the first reboot, I had to edit the grub entry by pressing "e" and add the options mentioned above. I added these options to "# defoptions..." and "# altoptions..." in "/boot/grub/menu.lst" and run "update-grub" afterwards.

This was all I had to do to install Ubuntu using a SATA->IDE adapter. If you have any questions, ask me (Zulu5).

Story 2

I used the [http://sourceforge.net/projects/instlux instlux] and instluxNETUbuntu6_06 to install without CD. Worked without problems on P5B Deluxe. Now I need to wait for fixes to get CD/DVD and 1GB LAN working -but everything else seems to work fine.

Story 3

I downloaded a Daily cd from http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/daily/ (the 28/09) and managed to install Edgy having a SATA HDD and an IDE CDROM. Note: kernel 2.6.17-10 that this cd has fixes the problem with the Jmicron controller. Though then you get some problems with the ICH8 controller (Intel one) so I had to connect my SATA HDD to the JMicorn controller (for gigabyte GA-965p-DS3 the purple slots belong to the JMicron Controller)

Note #2: GRUB does not appear to support (all versions of the) JMicron controller, resulting in "Error 21". The workaround is to install LILO during the installation process. Before rebooting, go "Back" and from the menu choose "Install the LILO Bootloader". You may need to manually create a lilo.conf referencing /dev/sda as your boot drive. Another option is to use a Windows/FreeDOS bootloader to boot into a small DOS partition on the drive, containing the linld.com (http://195.66.192.168/linux/linld/) Linux booter for DOS (loadlin, on the other hand, chokes on Ubuntu's large initrd, so cannot be used), copy the kernel and initrd to it and boot from there.

Story 4

On my Asus P5B with my SATA hard drive connected to the ICH8 controller and my PATA DVD writer drive connected to the JMicron IDE port, the daily live CD ( http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ ) of 11th October worked like a charm for me. The alternate CD did not work for me, so be sure to use the right one.

Story 5

On my Asus P5B with dual SATAs plugged into ICH8 and an Asus DVD ROM drive connection to the JMicron IDE port, the alternate daily image of 14th October worked like a charm for me.

Story 6

I used USB-IDE connector for connecting IDE CDROM to my Intel DG965OT motherboard. Installation of Edgy Eft beta was successful. Later I backported to 2.6.17 and compiled Marvell PATA driver from Alan Cox (http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/16/157). My IDE CDROM and hard drive work properly. The back ported version of the driver is here: (http://www.malinov.com/linux/pata_marvell-0.0.4t.tar.gz) DISCLAIMER: USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK, NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. Note: SATA controller must be configured in AHCI mode (check BIOS setup), otherwise Ubuntu will not recognize SATA disks.

Story 7

  • Asus P5B, bios version 0701 with Core 2 Duo E6400
  • 1 SATA HD plugged into ICH8
  • 1 PATA Combo DVD/CD writer (on the JMicron)
  • Edgy Eft RC

Initial boot was fine, but installer would hang the computer somewhere in the middle of installation, after partitioning and apparently during software installation. After trying various combinations of bios settings and kernel options, I finally blundered into a working combination:

  • disabled legacy USB in the bios (and hauled an old PS2 keyboard and mouse out of the closet)
  • set both ICH8 and JMicron to AHCI in the bios
  • used "noacpi" as an additional kernel boot option

I'm not sure if all of these are necessary -- I had tried the top two items by themselves and with other kernel boot options without success. "noacpi" seemed to be the thing that did the trick. In any case, the installer completed successfully without crashing/hanging.

Core_2_Duo_Support (last edited 2008-08-06 16:13:40 by localhost)