Konan
09-06-2007, 09:12 AM
If any Linux users see the Shuttle Xpc SN68SG2 AMD/64 x2 on sale please read on. This is not an anti-Shuttle rant by any means - my previous Shuttle with an AMD64/3000 is my favorite machine. It is just that I think this latest box is not quite ready for Linux. Or possibly, Linux is not ready for it. My experience on this one is the type that would be fun if it ended in success, since it hauled me down into areas of Linux that I have either forgotten or never tried.
Here is a list of the problems. Possibly someone will have suggestions or has seen some of them.
Installing Debian Etch 4.0r0 with a flash drive. (Also tried Sarge, but the kernel panics on booting the install disk.) This machine has an AMD64/6000 x2, 2gb of pc800 ram, a 400gb sata disk, DVD burner, onboard 1000 ethernet and onboard video (An nvidia 6xxx something - I forget).
On install Etch can't find the ethernet. I bypassed this problem at first by just plugging in a PCI nic and kept going. Nvidia.com no longer has NFORCE drivers on their site since they claim that all non-graphic drivers are available in all later Linux distributions. lspci shows the adapter to be "unknown nvidia".
Etch comes up and runs just fine except that it can never find the DVD after install. Fstab has it at /dev/hdb. It is actually installed and the BIOS sees it at /dev/hda2. There is nothing in Dmesg about any driver being loaded for a CD/DVD. Again since I seldom use CDs or DVDs I ignored this for the moment.
Built a 2.6.18 kernel using the Debian supplied Etch source. Works fine but still doesn't see the DVD.
Built a 2.6.22 kernel from kernel.org. This kernel stops on boot with the message "Waiting for boot filesytem" and drops into the busybox. Tried every Serial ATA option in the kernel config but never affected it. Lots of time spent on this. Finally got a couple of Linux friends together, hauled the machine to the office where we could have a broadband line, and banged on it together. Finally discovered that the boot was pointing to the wrong place, i.e. /dev/sda1 rather than where the drive really is at /dev/sdb2 (??!!) Ran out of time before I could figure out how to change initrd or whatever to repoint. To make matters more confusing, the BIOS has nothing about Sata anywhere but shows 3 channels of IDE when there is actually only one physical IDE channel Obviously, the BIOS maps the Sata into the IDE chain for whatever reason.
And the most irritating bug of all... Xorg and KDE load just fine (on 2.6.18, that is). The NVIDIA binary video driver installs with no problem and shows my widescreen in beautiful 1680x1050. But, if the mouse is inactive for more than a few seconds, on the next use the mouse pointer has a delay of about a quarter second before moving, then jumps to catch up. As long as the mouse is active, it acts normally. Also on any program with a scroll bar, the scrolling is very course. It acts just like a low end video card, with generic drivers, being used at too high a resolution.
Now, another problem that I didn't work on, but that really stumped me. As I was troubleshooting the Sata, I decided to try an ordinary Pata drive just to see if a vanilla installation would work. It booted and the 2.6.22 kernel compiled and worked just fine. At this point, I would have decided to just leave the Pata in and forget the Sata. Except that the disk was SLOW. With the Sata, Etch would finish its base install in about a minute. For the Pata it tooks about 12 minutes. Copying my local Etch mirror to the drive from a USB drive takes about 45 minutes with the Sata (And on any of my other machines). When the Pata was installed, I stopped the process 3 hours later, unfinished. A kernel compile on either the Sata or Pata takes about the same time so the problem appears not to be processor related, but something to do with the Disk subsystem. I have never seen this symptom before and not really sure where to start. However, I have to say that I have not tried to troubleshoot this yet or even tried to google up an answer.
For the moment, I have put the machine on the shelf and am waiting for a rainy day when I have the urge to hack. For now I have gone back to my other Shuttle that has been rock solid for about 2 years now.
Konan
Here is a list of the problems. Possibly someone will have suggestions or has seen some of them.
Installing Debian Etch 4.0r0 with a flash drive. (Also tried Sarge, but the kernel panics on booting the install disk.) This machine has an AMD64/6000 x2, 2gb of pc800 ram, a 400gb sata disk, DVD burner, onboard 1000 ethernet and onboard video (An nvidia 6xxx something - I forget).
On install Etch can't find the ethernet. I bypassed this problem at first by just plugging in a PCI nic and kept going. Nvidia.com no longer has NFORCE drivers on their site since they claim that all non-graphic drivers are available in all later Linux distributions. lspci shows the adapter to be "unknown nvidia".
Etch comes up and runs just fine except that it can never find the DVD after install. Fstab has it at /dev/hdb. It is actually installed and the BIOS sees it at /dev/hda2. There is nothing in Dmesg about any driver being loaded for a CD/DVD. Again since I seldom use CDs or DVDs I ignored this for the moment.
Built a 2.6.18 kernel using the Debian supplied Etch source. Works fine but still doesn't see the DVD.
Built a 2.6.22 kernel from kernel.org. This kernel stops on boot with the message "Waiting for boot filesytem" and drops into the busybox. Tried every Serial ATA option in the kernel config but never affected it. Lots of time spent on this. Finally got a couple of Linux friends together, hauled the machine to the office where we could have a broadband line, and banged on it together. Finally discovered that the boot was pointing to the wrong place, i.e. /dev/sda1 rather than where the drive really is at /dev/sdb2 (??!!) Ran out of time before I could figure out how to change initrd or whatever to repoint. To make matters more confusing, the BIOS has nothing about Sata anywhere but shows 3 channels of IDE when there is actually only one physical IDE channel Obviously, the BIOS maps the Sata into the IDE chain for whatever reason.
And the most irritating bug of all... Xorg and KDE load just fine (on 2.6.18, that is). The NVIDIA binary video driver installs with no problem and shows my widescreen in beautiful 1680x1050. But, if the mouse is inactive for more than a few seconds, on the next use the mouse pointer has a delay of about a quarter second before moving, then jumps to catch up. As long as the mouse is active, it acts normally. Also on any program with a scroll bar, the scrolling is very course. It acts just like a low end video card, with generic drivers, being used at too high a resolution.
Now, another problem that I didn't work on, but that really stumped me. As I was troubleshooting the Sata, I decided to try an ordinary Pata drive just to see if a vanilla installation would work. It booted and the 2.6.22 kernel compiled and worked just fine. At this point, I would have decided to just leave the Pata in and forget the Sata. Except that the disk was SLOW. With the Sata, Etch would finish its base install in about a minute. For the Pata it tooks about 12 minutes. Copying my local Etch mirror to the drive from a USB drive takes about 45 minutes with the Sata (And on any of my other machines). When the Pata was installed, I stopped the process 3 hours later, unfinished. A kernel compile on either the Sata or Pata takes about the same time so the problem appears not to be processor related, but something to do with the Disk subsystem. I have never seen this symptom before and not really sure where to start. However, I have to say that I have not tried to troubleshoot this yet or even tried to google up an answer.
For the moment, I have put the machine on the shelf and am waiting for a rainy day when I have the urge to hack. For now I have gone back to my other Shuttle that has been rock solid for about 2 years now.
Konan