asterisk users - Dec 2005 - Semi OT - SuperMicro config question for the Linux/Hardware jedi's - $50 bounty!

I have a SuperMicro 5013C-MT with the P4SCT+ motherboard and am having 
trouble
with all Linux distributions  (Debian, Gentoo, Redhat ES3 and
Ubuntu). No distributions will detect the SATA drives and therefore
cannot install.

I've ran a google check and it seems the onboard controller is completely
unsupported by Linux and there are proprietary binary drivers with a
classic catch 22 scenario where they require a working installation to set
up while the installation depends on them.

Anyone offer any insight, too late tonight for me to get any support 
from SuperMicro, thought I would give the listserv's a try.

If anyone can offer a solution here that gets me past this roadblock, 
I'd gladly offer a $50 bounty payable via Paypal.

Thanks,

-- 
Cory Andrews
Senior Partner
+++++++++++
VOIPSupply.com
454 Sonwil Drive
Buffalo, NY 14225
+++++++++++
voice - 716.630.1555 X22
email - Cory@VOIPSupply.com
fax - 716.630.1548

On Wed, 2005-12-21 at 20:14 -0500, Cory Andrews wrote:
> I have a SuperMicro 5013C-MT with the P4SCT+ motherboard and am having 
> trouble
> with all Linux distributions  (Debian, Gentoo, Redhat ES3 and
> Ubuntu). No distributions will detect the SATA drives and therefore
> cannot install.
> 
> I've ran a google check and it seems the onboard controller is
completely
> unsupported by Linux and there are proprietary binary drivers with a
> classic catch 22 scenario where they require a working installation to set
> up while the installation depends on them.
There seems to be 2 onboard controller on that motherboard from what I
can see on Supermicro's website. Which one are you trying to get to
work? Or did you try both of them? I did have this problem myself when I
got my first SATA drive and I wrote a small article on how to create a
driver disk for Fedora Core 1 for my onboard Promise SATA controller. I
believe Redhat ES3 is pretty close to FC1 so the article could still
help you out. It's at
http://www.jrcormier.com/computers-linux/fedorasata.php

Hope this helps!

-- 
Jean-Rene Cormier <jrc@jrcormier.com>

Cory,

SUSE LINUX does well with SATA drives http://opensuse.org

--Tony
>>> Cory@VOIPSupply.com  >>>
I have a SuperMicro 5013C-MT with the P4SCT+ motherboard and am having 
trouble
with all Linux distributions  (Debian, Gentoo, Redhat ES3 and
Ubuntu). No distributions will detect the SATA drives and therefore
cannot install.

I've ran a google check and it seems the onboard controller is completely
unsupported by Linux and there are proprietary binary drivers with a
classic catch 22 scenario where they require a working installation to set
up while the installation depends on them.

Anyone offer any insight, too late tonight for me to get any support 
from SuperMicro, thought I would give the listserv's a try.

If anyone can offer a solution here that gets me past this roadblock, 
I'd gladly offer a $50 bounty payable via Paypal.

Thanks,

-- 
Cory Andrews
Senior Partner
+++++++++++
VOIPSupply.com
454 Sonwil Drive
Buffalo, NY 14225
+++++++++++
voice - 716.630.1555 X22
email - Cory@VOIPSupply.com
fax - 716.630.1548

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Had the same issue with Fedora Core 1.  The way we overcame the issue was to
use a 3Ware SATA controller.  The 3Ware card was detected as a SCSI
controller and the drives work perfectly.  If that is not an option, you may
want to check if the BIOS will let you run the SATA drives in legacy mode
which will emulate IDE.

- Pedro

On 12/21/05, Cory Andrews <Cory@voipsupply.com>
wrote:
>
> I have a SuperMicro 5013C-MT with the P4SCT+ motherboard and am having
> trouble
> with all Linux distributions  (Debian, Gentoo, Redhat ES3 and
> Ubuntu). No distributions will detect the SATA drives and therefore
> cannot install.
>
> I've ran a google check and it seems the onboard controller is
completely
> unsupported by Linux and there are proprietary binary drivers with a
> classic catch 22 scenario where they require a working installation to set
> up while the installation depends on them.
>
> Anyone offer any insight, too late tonight for me to get any support
> from SuperMicro, thought I would give the listserv's a try.
>
> If anyone can offer a solution here that gets me past this roadblock,
> I'd gladly offer a $50 bounty payable via Paypal.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Cory Andrews
> Senior Partner
> +++++++++++
> VOIPSupply.com
> 454 Sonwil Drive
> Buffalo, NY 14225
> +++++++++++
> voice - 716.630.1555 X22
> email - Cory@VOIPSupply.com
> fax - 716.630.1548
>
> _______________________________________________
> --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
>
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>
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Cory Andrews wrote:
> I have a SuperMicro 5013C-MT with the P4SCT+ motherboard and am having 
> trouble
> with all Linux distributions  (Debian, Gentoo, Redhat ES3 and
> Ubuntu). No distributions will detect the SATA drives and therefore
> cannot install.
That motherboard has an Adaptec/Marvell SATA controller, which does not 
have a open source driver in those distributions. There is an 
open-source driver in the very latest 2.6 kernel releases, but it won't 
be included in the installer kernels for any of those distros.

You will either have to:

A) use the Intel SATA controller and skip the Adaptec one until you get 
the distro up and running and can update the kernel

B) build your own installer kernel using a more up-to-date kernel source 
tarball

C) build a module you could load from a 'driver disk' for the distros 
that support them, using a backport of the open-source driver

On 12/21/05, Cory Andrews <Cory@voipsupply.com>
wrote:
> I have a SuperMicro 5013C-MT with the P4SCT+ motherboard and am having
> trouble
> with all Linux distributions  (Debian, Gentoo, Redhat ES3 and
> Ubuntu). No distributions will detect the SATA drives and therefore
> cannot install.
Hi Cory,

I have that system as well - excellent system, but it was frustrating
getting Linux on it. Here's what I did with Ubuntu:

Boot up the Ubuntu live cd. apt-get build-essential and the kernel
sources. Download the marvell SATA driver. I am using 3.4.2a, and have
been for 6+ months with no issues. If you're using Ubuntu 5.10 which
has kernel 2.6.12, you'll need a patch to get the driver to compile -
send me an email directly if you can't find it on google. Build the
driver in the livecd, and then copy mvSata.ko off to another machine.

Then boot the Ubuntu install CD, and after it sets up the network but
before it gets to the partitioning, ALT-F2 into a shell and grab that
mvSata.ko from the machine you copied it to. modprobe that in the
Ubuntu shell and the disks should be available. You should be able to
proceed through the Ubuntu install now.

The next problem is that Ubuntu has no knowledge of that mvSata
driver, so it won't be part of the initrd once you finish the install
and reboot, so Ubuntu won't boot. Boot up the livecd again, grab the
mvSata.ko off of your other machine to get the disks online, and then
generate a new initrd in your ubuntu install. Basically you need to
copy mvSata.ko to /lib/modules/<kernel ver>/kernel/drivers/scsi/ and
then do a depmod with the -b option since your real root partition
will be mounted somewhere else like /mnt or wherever you mounted it.
After that use mkinitrd to generate a new initrd including the mvSata
module.

This sounds like a heck of a lot of work but it's not so bad. Once you
get it installed once, kernel upgrades are easy - you just need to put
the mvSata in place and regenerate the initrd after installing the new
kernel. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Dave

--
David Muench - davemuench@gmail.com
Jabber ID: dave@jabber.wasteland.org