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From: Tom Austin
Subject: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 10:07:42
Message: <48bfebae$1@news.povray.org>
While building my new PC I ran into an interesting problem trying to 
boot a live Linux CD - at least all of the ones I tried.

Many motherboards are using the Marvell IDE controller - which is 
currently not supported by most Linux distributions.

So while it starts booting fine, when it hands off to the kernel 
everything comes to a screeching halt because it cannot find the CD.



I found pendrivelinux.com that helped me with w very quick boot from USB 
solution.


Funny enough, it was the Knoppix screen shot that Andrew posted that I 
had been seeing for the past few days.


And all I wanted - fdisk

<sigh>




Tom


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 11:12:18
Message: <48bffad2@news.povray.org>
Tom Austin wrote:

> Many motherboards are using the Marvell IDE controller - which is 
> currently not supported by most Linux distributions.
> 
> So while it starts booting fine, when it hands off to the kernel 
> everything comes to a screeching halt because it cannot find the CD.

Interesting...

My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many 
Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find 
the PATA ones just fine.

(I remember seeing "Marvell" and thinking "oo, that's what I have". But 
it isn't. I have a Marvell NIC. The IDE controller is nVidia.)

I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no idea 
which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Tom Austin
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 11:24:44
Message: <48bffdbc$1@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
> 
>> Many motherboards are using the Marvell IDE controller - which is 
>> currently not supported by most Linux distributions.
>>
>> So while it starts booting fine, when it hands off to the kernel 
>> everything comes to a screeching halt because it cannot find the CD.
> 
> Interesting...
> 
> My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many 
> Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find 
> the PATA ones just fine.
> 
> (I remember seeing "Marvell" and thinking "oo, that's what I have". But 
> it isn't. I have a Marvell NIC. The IDE controller is nVidia.)
> 
> I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
> the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no idea 
> which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)
> 

That's what I ran across - I just didn't have the energy to dig into 
which one.

I guess I should learn it sometime as this PC is going to have this 
issue for a while and I plan on doing some fun Linux things with it.


Tom


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 11:34:38
Message: <48c0000e$1@news.povray.org>
>> I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
>> the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no 
>> idea which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)
>>
> 
> That's what I ran across - I just didn't have the energy to dig into 
> which one.
> 
> I guess I should learn it sometime as this PC is going to have this 
> issue for a while and I plan on doing some fun Linux things with it.

IIRC, most live CDs failed to find either my harddrives or my NIC. To 
fix it, you have to say something like

   modprobe nv_forcedeth
   modprobe nv_sata

and then they both work again. I figured this out by searching several 
billion manpages, discovering where kernal modules (such as device 
drivers) are stored, and then listing the contents of the folder and 
looking for anything that sounded like it might work.

Hard to fix? No. User-friendly? No!

I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Tom Austin
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 12:04:40
Message: <48c00718$1@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
>>> I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
>>> the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no 
>>> idea which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)
>>>
>>
>> That's what I ran across - I just didn't have the energy to dig into 
>> which one.
>>
>> I guess I should learn it sometime as this PC is going to have this 
>> issue for a while and I plan on doing some fun Linux things with it.
> 
> IIRC, most live CDs failed to find either my harddrives or my NIC. To 
> fix it, you have to say something like
> 
>   modprobe nv_forcedeth
>   modprobe nv_sata
> 
> and then they both work again. I figured this out by searching several 
> billion manpages, discovering where kernal modules (such as device 
> drivers) are stored, and then listing the contents of the folder and 
> looking for anything that sounded like it might work.
> 
> Hard to fix? No. User-friendly? No!
> 
> I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...
> 

I find that I can get into Linux fairly easily and remember quite a bit, 
but when i step back from the guts for a while I have to figure things 
out again.  Granted it all seems familiar and doesn't take as long, but 
it's hard to remember exactly what everything does when you mess with it 
once in a while.


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From: Fredrik Eriksson
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 13:10:18
Message: <op.ugyvbgqh7bxctx@e6600>
On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:34:37 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...

It makes more sense as "forced eth", even though the idea of a module that  
forces death is somewhat amusing...

Apparently, the ambiguity is at least partially intentional.



-- 
FE


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 13:43:50
Message: <48c01e56@news.povray.org>
Tom Austin wrote:

> I find that I can get into Linux fairly easily and remember quite a bit, 
> but when i step back from the guts for a while I have to figure things 
> out again.  Granted it all seems familiar and doesn't take as long, but 
> it's hard to remember exactly what everything does when you mess with it 
> once in a while.

I know what you mean...

At one time I installed Gentoo Linux. (As in, that Linux that doesn't 
come with an installer and has to be manually compiled from source and 
installed piece by piece.) Now I have _no clue_ how I did it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 13:56:22
Message: <48c02146$1@news.povray.org>
Tom Austin wrote:
> And all I wanted - fdisk

What does fdisk give you that diskpart doesn't?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 15:28:06
Message: <48c036c6$1@news.povray.org>
On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:12:22 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many
> Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find
> the PATA ones just fine.

Weird, my HP system here has that same chipset on it, and the live discs 
do OK with it - SATA drive works beautifully with openSUSE 11.0 running 
on it, too.

Jim


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From: Tom Austin
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 4 Sep 2008 15:40:01
Message: <48c03991@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> I know what you mean...
> 
> At one time I installed Gentoo Linux. (As in, that Linux that doesn't 
> come with an installer and has to be manually compiled from source and 
> installed piece by piece.) Now I have _no clue_ how I did it.
> 


I usually do a Linux From Scratch for most things.

While I do the automated build, it at least keeps me in touch with the 
roots of what is going on.


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