Hi

I am am building a Software RAID server (Linux software RAID 5) and have the following board in my sights:

Asus P5QL-E, Intel P43, Socket 775, 1333FSB, EPU

Now I got no idea how well Linux is supported on it. The most important detail is for me the SATA support.

The board is using these chips supposedly, I have no idea how new this mobo is and if I am going to enter a world of pain or if everything is going to go without a hitch.

ICH10R: 6xSATA-II (RAID0/1/5/10), JMB363: 1x ATA133, 1x eSATA

Needlessly to say, I don't need support for all the gizmos that the Mobo offers, Audio for example does not matter, since this is going to be a server.

Does anybody run Linux on this Mobo?
My target distribution that I want to run is Debian Etch.

thanks for any pointers

Markus

This might answer your question of SATA compatibility.
http://www.linux-tested.com/results/asus_p5ql-e.html

Thanks, that solves my problem!

After buying the board and expecting it to work, I found that networking is not supported by kernel 2.6.6.24 (Debian Etch and a half).
A ton of other strange stuff has cropped up:

lspci shows pretty much all the north bridge and system components as UNKNOWN DEVICE

I see only one CPU of the two cores I got and the RAM of 2 GBs, is reduced to 1 GB.. very strange, I have never seen anything like this on Linux.

Does anybody have pointers? Do I need a SMP kernel for multi core? I thought that today, kernels got merged and are now all SMP ready...

Or do I misunderstand something about Debian Etch and a half?
The system was a standard Debian Etch on which I installed the 2.6.24 kernel in order to get SATA support (2.6.18 does not support the P5QL-E SATA controllers at all)

Markus

Answering my own post, because either nobody knows or cares:

The case of only one CPU and only 1 gbyte memory is my fault:
I used the i486 kernel that has no SMP code, you need to use the i686 at least, then all memory and the two cores get recognized.

About the HW:
Only Kernel 2.6.25 and up recognizes the whole HW and most important of all, the ethernet interface, which is a

attlansic or something banana brand. Gosh, next time I buy a Mobo I will make sure that I get a more recognized NIC. It was not even a cheap board.
I am always amazed at the endless wealth of HW manufacturers that seem to be appearing out of nowhere.
For me, many ugly memories getting working drivers for Linux on these HW.

Markus