Need Help With ASUS M5A97-R2 Motherboard Running Linux Fedora or CentOS
I am a long time Linux user, and after 10 years a buddy (guru) and I are building a pair of "mirror" computers. Originally I started thinking of using the Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P motherboard, but after finding virtually no information about this particular mobo and Linux , and what I found was discouraging, after even more research I "discovered" that the ASUS M5A97-R2 are extremely similar, not totally but close enough. I found a place that lists which ASUS motherboards are compatible with Linux and Discovered that the M5A97-R2 can run Fedora 17, which is far more encouraging than anything I found out about the Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P. During my research, I also discovered that there is a problem with most modern boards and it deals with the so-called and UEFI BIOS and IOMMU which by default is normally disabled. IOMMU is supported on Linux based systems to convert 32bit I/O to 64bit MMIO. Configuration options: [Disabled] [Enabled].
Has anyone set up a M5A97-R2 to run either Fedora, or CentOS?? Did you have any troubles? Are there any "Gotchas" I need to know, and if so how did you solve them?? In the "Ethereal World" these Mirror Computers will have the ASUS M5A97-R2 motherboard, running a AMD FX3600 six core processor, with initially 4-8GB of RAM, and 1TB 6GB/s hard drives. Before we get too far down the road in this project I want to know if there any Bogymen lurking in the shadows waiting to ambush us. Any information you could provid would be greatly appreciated. |
I run the "bigger brother" of that board (M5A99X Evo) and have no problems at all (Slackware and Gentoo), the BIOS has a legacy mode for cases when you want to install distributions that have problems with UEFI (this shouldn't be the case for Fedora, but I don't know about CentOS) and the IOMMU option is only relevant if you want to use PCI passthrough in virtual machines (if you don't, just disable it).
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I was just wondering this myself, I remember seeing all the talk about UEFI. I'm looking at a small board like http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AM1IA/specifications/
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Difficulties with UEFI are mostly a thing from the past, nowadays almost all distros support UEFI out of the box, some support even Secure Boot. Also, most mainboards have a "Legacy BIOS" option to run OSes without UEFI support.
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UEFI is not an issue
it is the " Frankenstein's MONSTER " Microsoft created with "secure boot" others will have more "colorful" language for that monstrosity called "secure boot" |
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Looks like a decent mobo, and I don't see any particular issues with it. The reviews that I see for it suggest some possibility for DOA (dead on arrival) for this board (and other ASUS boards in my recent research for my own computers that I build). DOA is not specific to ASUS boards as it can happen with mobos from any company, it's just the percent of reviews that describe it for ASUS boards is increased. Check this yourself.
Example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131873 |
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