hi,
im a total newbie to linux and with the help of some experts here i got my system setup with suse 10.1 x64 version. i need some help configuring the hardware and understanding some stuff. im a total newb so please take some time out and give me a detailed reply (i dont know any commands or terminologies).

firstly my system is
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 939 Venice E6
Asus A8N-VM CSM NVIDIA NFORCE 430 + GEFORCE 6150
Bios Version 1001
1 GB RAM = 896 Physical + 128 Video
Seagate 160GB SATA
-part1 : 32 gb ntfs
-part2 : 20 gb ntfs
-part3 : 20 gb ntfs
-part4 : 50 gb ntfs

-part5 : 11 gb / reiserfs
-part6 : 1.2 gb swap
-part8 : 16 gb home reiserfs
-GRUB bootloader on MBR
Samsung 40GB IDE
-part1 : 38 gb ntfs

the installation was pretty straightforward and it detected my windows partitions on the sata and automatically did the rest. GRUB bootloader went on the MBR and everything went ok.

then i came across some hurdles
the nforce driver i downloaded from the nvidia website will not work. first when i run it using 'sh' it tells me to accept the agreement and then says 'no precompiled kernel sources were found to match your kernel. installer will compile....something like that' then it shows a percentage bar showing 'compiling kernel sources' and then gives error saying installer failed. this happens twice, once for the network installer and second time for audio installer.
any workable solution for this?

then i tried the geforce driver
first i ctrl+alt+f1, then logged in as root, gave 'telinit 3' then 'sh <file name>' once the installer was done, i gave 'sax2 -m 0=nvidia' then telinit 5;exit
and reboot. on rebooting it asked me to test the settings. in these settings i cant resize the picture to fit my screen by software and doing it by monitor settings will put my xp screen out. also when i c my sys config in my computer it shows RAM = 878 instead of 896. and when i open x-server info window it shows max video = 16 instead of 128. so how do i fix this to match my actual settings?

now should the nforce driver be installed first or the geforce? in case the sequence matters

once i get my network working with help from you guys then how to configure it?
i want my ip address to be 172.16.100.4, dns 172.16.100.1, and gateway to be 172.16.100.1. is there any way to check if this works like we have the network icon in windows tray area.

my IDE drive does not get detected by linux. what to do?

also another big worry is my cabinet LED. my cabinet like most of them has 2 LED's the green for power and red for busy/HDD in use. now the moment i accept linux in the bootloader the red one comes on and stays continuously till i log out. (in windows it just blinks for a while when i open something new) so is this a problem in the hardware or some over stressing or is this just normal?

i hope the experts can help me out, and please, i dont know linux at all so if u can be detailed it would be great.

thanks

1. You usually don´t need a driver for network and audio.
2. The kernel consumes some RAM, this is normal. Videoram: you can edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
3. The IP adress range for private use is: 192.168.1.0 - 192.168.1.255. Gateway should be set to 192.168.1.0 or 192.168.1.1
4. login as root and type fdisk -l: the drives and partitions should be listed then.

umm....my home network has the ip addresses that i listed above, my main problem is how do i configure the system to use those?

i'll try the rest.

other suggestions/ideas welcome.

thanks

Configure network:
Open yast -> network -> network card; there you enter the static IP adress.
Gateway/Router: consult the manual.

ok status update

nforce driver still fails.

geforce driver works, my screen now shows proper sizing, but i have no idea how to check the video ram because xorg.conf doesnt show the amount of video ram. however it shows driver as "nvidia" instead of open source "nv" driver. but how to find video ram.

network doesnt work. i put ip address as 172.16.100.4 in routing i put gateway as 172.16.100.1 and in "domain and name search" i put domain as WORKGROUP and name search as 172.16.100.1 network still wont work. really pissed now coz i want to use internet on linux. is there no way i can do it like in windows? or maybe test it out like c those 2 small screens in the tray? heck i dont even know whether the damn NIC is responding to linux?

IDE drive is still missing, i think it needs the nforce driver (which wont install) to run? any ideas?

AND THAT RED LED ON THE CABINET IS SCARING ME TO HELL COZ IT CONTINUOUSLY GLOWS. I HOPE MY HARDWARE DOESNT GO BONKERS.

looks like network configuration is gonna be impossible in linux. this is getting crazy. im fast losing the belief that linux can be superior to windows because whats the point if a layperson cant even get a simple thing done..

I know what you mean k.electron. I am also begining to belive linux may not be all it is cracked up to be. I can't get my sound, video, and wireless internet to work properly at all. I will give linux two more weeks to impress me. If i cant gain any progress within that amount of time, i shall go back to windows with my tail between my legs. It takes so much work to do one simple thing in linux.

This is a serious problem; I've had my 6150K8MA-EKRS motherboard (6150/430) since last fall and I still can't get Linux running on it. This is after trying MEPIS 3.4.3, MEPIS 6.0, Fedora Core 5, SuSe 10.1, and probably some others. The only one in which the Ethernet worked was SuSe. That wasn't too reliable though, and it had serious display problems (no mouse cursor in X), so it was not a workable answer.

I just tried again with a recent MEPIS, which is now based on Ubuntu (based itself on Debian). I tried to install linux-headers and linux-sources and then run the nVidia driver installer (-0310), but it kept finding things to object to. It's not self-explanatory.

I don't know why the 430's Ethernet is different from the one that comes with the nForce 4 chipset, but nVidia screwed that up. And rather than work with the kernel maintainers to get a driver into the kernel, they put out that installer shell script which is incredibly fragile and badly documented ("follow the directions provided" <i>is</i> the provided directions).

ALSA sound seems okay on mine though. (Asus mobos use a different sound chip from my Foxconn.)

If anyone has any clue about how to get this to work, I'd <i>really</i> appreciate it. Until then, I'm stuck in Windows.

Hi,

this weekend I tried installing an ASUS M2NPV-VM with Athlon 3800+ and OpenSuse 10.1.

I couldn't get the network up either. Using Yast and configuring the Onboard Chip with DHCP all failed.

Eventually, I put in my old Realtek network card and told Yast to configure it with DHCP; then it worked without problems. So I'm using this as a workaround temporarily.

There seems to be a problem with the drivers, unfortunately, I'm not expert enough to put my finger on it.

Likewise, I can't get the sound working yet. Anyone has ideas?

Also, compilation of the nVidia drivers failed for exact the same reason as other users have reported throughout this forum.