Don't buy P45 chipset (especially Asus P5Q)

[brdokoky]

P5Q is good . When you need to install winxp on ahci , just make your own cd of winxp with ahci driver. After you can very easy install ubuntu. Network to work , prepare from windowsxp- download the driver with manual howto, and that's it. P5Q is superb

[Makere]

I would be interested in how raid5 works on ubuntu and asus p5q(-e)? Because I'm planning on to build my next home server based on those. Thanks in advance!

[baserunner_ams]

Hi all,

i have bught the P5Q Pro.

I can install windows 2003 64bit and vista 64bit without any trouble.
I can install Ubuntu 8.04.1 32bit without any problems (nic driver downloaded from asus)

When trying to install Ubuntu 64bit my systems hangs after recognizing the usb ports and devices.

My setup:
P5Q pro
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4 GB RAM
3* 500GB Sata HD (Barracuda)

I will try this link/tutorial:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=890604
for the raid setup

[nicbul]

I too am building a P5Q based system (Q6600, 4gb ddr2 1066, 500gb SATAHD, 9600GT) and have been researching its compatability with Ubuntu 8.04 64bit. It appears that there are potentially only three issues with the board: SATA drives, USB detection and on-board LAN.

SATA solution:
http://www.ubuntuhcl.org/browse/prod...us_p5q?id=6450

SATA and USB solution:
http://linuxrevolution.blogspot.com/...therboard.html

Steps to the LAN solution:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=770173

From what I gather from these posts, it's a matter of changing a couple of BIOS settings and then compiling the ethernet drivers.

I believe the drivers are downloaded from here:
http://support.asus.com/download/dow...Language=en-us

After selecting the correct motherboard model and operating system, in the section 'Other' is a Linux driver to download. I assume that this is for the LAN and that one would follow the steps for compiling it in the ubuntuforum post above.


I also have a newb-type question for the board: Does the latest bios version include all other previous BIOS updates or does one have to flash each update to get to the current version? AND! Do any of the BIOS versions work best or are most stable with Ubuntu?

[ac4000]

I also have a newb-type question for the board: Does the latest bios version include all other previous BIOS updates or does one have to flash each update to get to the current version? AND! Do any of the BIOS versions work best or are most stable with Ubuntu?

Unless it's a /really/ unusual BIOS (and there's almost no way it is), each flash update completely rewrites the chip (save for the protected part), so you can just jump to the version you want.

I hope everyone who has this board working is right ... just about to order one instead of a P5K to replace my Gigabyte GA-P965-DS3 that, due to a corrupted BIOS flash or something else, is currently a paperweight.

(And thanks to nicbul for listing all the solutions in one place.)

[gabba]

I just bought a P5Q-Pro and it's running fine under Ubuntu Hardy 8.04.1 64bits.

I installed winXP (before ubuntu) in IDE mode, and ExpressGate only works in that mode, so switching to AHCI was out of the question.

The following allowed me to have a fully functional system while staying in IDE sata mode.

1. Boot livecd with boot options: irqpoll all_generic_ide
(I found this tip on the french ubuntu forum.)

2. Install Ubuntu

3. Boot with the livecd again, mount the appropriate partition and go edit your grub.lst file to add irqpoll all_generic_ide to the boot line. There's a place in the file where you can put these options so that they are automatically appended even if you change kernels.

4. That booted fine, all that was left was to get the network card up: for that I went into Windows XP and downloaded the linux network driver for the P5K-PL (don't ask why they don't provide it for the P5Q). Instructions to compile it are pretty easy to find; after compiling when I tried "make install" it didn't want to, so I manually copied the .ko file to the place it's supposed to end up, and used the insmod command to activate it.

5. Everything was working fine, so I upgraded to the latest packages and kernel. I expected having to recompile the network driver, but the network was still working after reboot, so I suspect it was included in later updates. I'll try and remove the special boot options, just in case the new kernel also fixed some things...

EDIT: forgot to mention that my sata hard drive (and DVD writer I believe) are both plugged into the Marvell SATA ports (the different-colored ones).

[ac4000]

add irqpoll all_generic_ide to the boot line

Perfect! Worked like a charm. Thanks, gabba.

[gabba]

Perfect! Worked like a charm. Thanks, gabba.

Happy I could help!

One thing bothers me, however: I know those options help, but I have no clue about what they do: can they hamper performance or cause other problems? I'd appreciate if someone experienced could chime in and give us a little more information.

[ac4000]

One thing bothers me, however: I know those options help, but I have no clue about what they do: can they hamper performance or cause other problems?

My research indicates that AHCI has two advantages: hot-swapability and NCQ (native command queing). Tests are inconclusive as to whether or not this makes much difference in real world performance for most users. Since the technology is fairly new, the IDE BIOS setting is still often the default, even though AHCI is newer and usually supported (in the hardware).

Now here's where I'm making a reasonable guess: The Linux kernel expects SATA drives to use AHCI and IDE drives to use IDE, so it cannot find your SATA drives (by default) if they're running in IDE mode. (This is why I was able to boot without changing anything: my boot drive is an IDE; but I couldn't see my second drive, which is SATA.)

In order to change this behavior, we can add the options irqpoll and all_generic_ide. The second option forces the kernel to use IDE mode for everything (and so it finds your SATA drives). I don't know what the first option does, however; has anyone tried using just the second? Might give that a shot when I'm back on that computer.

Since XP and ExpressGate (among others) won't handle AHCI without additional help, it's easiest to just leave the system in IDE mode and force the kernel to use that mode (Linux is obviously more trustworthy and adaptable than XP with this sort of thing). There's a theoretical performance loss (via NCQ) and you lose hot-swabability, but in reality it's probably all the same.

[gabba]

Hey thanks for researching this!

I found the following about irqpoll:
(in this document which lists all kernel parameters:
http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentat...parameters.txt)

irqpoll		[HW]
			When an interrupt is not handled search all handlers
			for it. Also check all handlers each timer
			interrupt. Intended to get systems with badly broken
			firmware running.

Apparently you may need it if several peripherals wrongly share the same irq. I wonder why we're supposed to need it in this case? I have to try without it as well.