I'm looking at the A8V-E Deluxe to replace my socket 754 K8V-Deluxe. The names themselve seem to indicated a similiartiy. With the k8v Ive enjoyed in-kernel linux support, and with the supplied, K8T800/8237 chipset combination, and I was wondering If I would stop having such great support with the a8v-e's K8T890/VT8237R combination. I would bet that I should be fine, but just in case, is their anything to worry about/ look into?

I will be using SATA and the IDE, no RAID, and have been using the via-sata driver with my k8v. Dont care about the integrated audio, as I use a sound blaster.

thanks.

Bump Bump Bump

I think I have a similiar setup ... the Asus M2V board. Actually I am having problems using IDE DVD drive. There is a noticable latency in the system when the drive is being accessed, I think related to lack of DMA ... I'm looking into it now.

Here is my lspci output ...

Hi, I was just trying to set up a friend's new system, which has an asus M2V, and VIA K8T890 chipset. At the moment, I'm trying to install ubuntu 6.06 (cause she needs something easy to use), but it doesn't seem to be recognising either the sata controller (ie it doesn't recognise the hard drive), and it doesn't appear to recognise the inbuilt ethernet either.

This is vexing me. : (

Anybody have any ideas of whether this is a ubuntu problem, or a more general problem?

I was able to solve my issues with the DMA. This error was actually due to the south bridge VT8237A not being detected properly. I found a patch online that fixes this issue, but requires you to rebuild the kerenl. This doesn't help you for a fresh install though. If possible you could try installing to a PATA drive and then upgrade the kernel to get the SATA drives working.

The patch is located here:

http://forums.viaarena.com/messagevi...&enterthread=y

The ASUS website has source code for a kernel module that will enable the ethernet. I tried this out, but I was seeing data corruptions and hangs when using NFS shares. I had to get a PCI ethernet card. Until ASUS comes out with better drivers or new ones are written, I don't think there is much hope for getting it working.

What kernel were you using before that patch?

It was 2.6.17.6 I think.

Ordered the a8v-se-e or whatever, here goes.

I had to go through some gyrations to get FC5 installed on the M2V. There's no kernel support yet for the SATA controller. I had to hack the driver and manually apply it during the install. Every kernel upgrade requires a driver rebuild and a new initrd in order to boot from SATA.

I used the NIC driver that came with the motherboard (I compiled it from source), but it doesn't build in 2.6.17 kernels (and beyond) without a patch. I have the patch if anyone wants it. This also has to be rebuilt with each new kernel upgrade.

Don't buy the M2V unless you don't mind doing this sort of thing. Get the M2N instead.

Since I bought the Motherboard.. I have to stick with it.. can you please send me NIC patch.

Thanks
Phani

I'm happy with the board; the kernel just needs to catch up.

The NIC patch is nothing more than replacing all occurrences of "tso_size" with "gso_size" in at_main.c.

Let me know if you run into problems.

Jay

That fix is working. Thank you very much

Jay,

I know I am asking more questions, but you are the only person who I think knows the in and out of the M2V motherboard.

How did you get the SATA Working.. Did you use the patch provided in VIA website and can you give a very little description on how u did it and the last one is can we use the Marvell SATA controller for booting and if so where can I get the driver or the patch for the kernel.

I sincerely thank you for your help.

Thanks
Phani

No, I didn't use anything provided on the Via website. I just made a one-line change to the sata_via driver in the FC5 2054 kernel source that caused the kernel to recognize the SATA controller. The complicated part is getting the installer to suck in the modified sata_via driver so it can see the controller in order to install the OS. Once the OS is installed, you have to modify it, too, because it doesn't know about the SATA controller, either.

I wrote this howto more as a reminder for myself than anything else. Hopefully it'll help, although I realize it's not well formatted. Note that this procedure is focused on *booting* FC5 from a SATA drive, not booting from an IDE drive and just enabling SATA after the fact.

Contact me by email at jcliburn at gmail dot com for instructions on obtaining the prebuilt driver files you'll need.

PREREQUISITES:
1. A working system with a floppy drive to which you'll copy driver files.
2. The target (Asus M2V) system must also have a floppy drive from which you'll copy driver files.
3. The desired target system OS must be FC5.x86_64.
4. The hard disk must be a non-RAID SATA drive. This procedure won't work for IDE/PATA drives, nor was it written for SATA RAID drives. I have a single SATA drive installed in my M2V system.
5. You must be willing to rebuild the sata_via module each time you update your kernel. This means you'll also need to download kernel source with each kernel update and rebuild/reinstall the module and update initrd BEFORE you reboot following a kernel update.


PROCEDURE:
* Get libata.ko and sata_via.ko.
* Copy libata.ko and sata_via.ko to a floppy disk.

The remaining steps are executed on the target (Asus M2V) system.

* Insert the FC5.x86_64 install disk. (DVD is easiest.)
* Reboot.
* At the boot prompt, press Enter.
* Select the language and such when prompted.
* Eventually, since the installer can't detect your hard drive, you'll be asked to choose the drivers manually. DON'T PRESS ANYHTING ON THIS WINDOW! Just let it sit.
* Press ctrl-alt-F2; you'll be presented with a shell terminal.
* Insert your floppy disk containing the drivers.
* Execute the following commands:
mkdir /mnt/fd
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd
modprobe /mnt/fd/libata.ko
modprobe /mnt/fd/sata_via.ko
umount /mnt/fd

* Eject the floppy disk.
* Now press ctrl-alt-F1 to return to the install screen.
* Click "No" in the "choose driver install" window.
* Proceed with normal FC5 installation. After the installation is complete, the DVD tray will eject and you'll be asked to reboot. DON'T REMOVE THE DVD, AND DON'T REBOOT!
* Reinsert the DVD. We need to boot from it again and copy our drivers to the hard drive.
* Reboot.
* At the boot prompt, enter "linux rescue".
* Select the language and such when prompted.
* Eventually, since the installer can't detect your hard drive, you'll be asked to choose the drivers manually. DON'T PRESS ANYHTING ON THIS WINDOW! Just let it sit.
* Press ctrl-alt-F2; you'll be presented with a shell window.
* Insert your floppy disk containing the drivers.
* Execute the following commands:
mkdir /mnt/fd
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd
modprobe /mnt/fd/libata.ko
modprobe /mnt/fd/sata_via.ko
umount /mnt/fd

* DON'T EJECT THE FLOPPY DISK.
* Now press ctrl-alt-F1 to return to the install screen.
* Click "No" in the "choose driver install" window.
* When prompted whether you want to chroot /mnt/sysimage, click "Continue". You'll be presented with a shell prompt.
* Enter "chroot /mnt/sysimage". You can now alter files on your hard drive.
* Execute these commands:
cd /lib/modules/2.6.15-1.2054_FC5/kernel/drivers/scsi
cp libata.ko libata.ko.orig
cp sata_via.ko sata_via.ko.orig
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
cp /mnt/libata.ko .
cp /mnt/sata_via.ko .
umount /mnt
cd /etc
vi modprobe.conf and add this line:
alias scsi_hostadapter sata_via
Save and exit vi.
cd /boot
mv initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img.orig
mkinitrd --preload=libata initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5

* Eject the DVD.
* Eject the floppy disk.
* Enter the following commands:
exit
exit

* The system should now reboot to FC5 on your SATA drive.

Hi Jay,

Could you tell us what change did you make to the sata_via driver?
I've been trying since yesterday to get it to work but all I've got is a 120 sec countdown before a segfault while trying to load the driver I've compiled.

Thanks for your help.