Linux on the Sager 9860 - Page 3

HI
I Currently have thge Default Fedora Core 3 DVD disk with which to install, so I am not quite sure which core version it is running, most probably the 2.6XX core. It loads the Promise SATA module , but does not detect my HDD in iether Raid or normal ATA mode
My config is as follows:
Hypersonic EX7 (Sager 9860)
1024 DDr
60 Gig 7200 PATA Drive
Intel 3.4
Nvidia 6800GO 256M
8X Dual Layer DVD Writer
NO Wifi
Build in Modem , Cam, Firewire, Card Reader.

And that is pretty much my config as it is.
I did however have succes with installing Suse 9.1 on the Sager 9860 with drivers from the Promise Webiste for Suse 9.1.
I was wondering if it will ne possible to use the same drivers to boot Fedora Core3? and if so How would I be able to do that? Pls remember I am a total NOOB here
Can you check it out for me as here is the driver dload link for the Suse 9.1: http://www.promise.com/support/file/....0.0.24.tar.gz
They also have older Red Hat 8 drivers that I dont think will work iether :S

I was only able to get Suse 9.1 to work using the driver and having the Raid option set in the bios with Stripe 0-1 so that it was detected as a raid setup.
Hope you can help me with it

Thanks Jon-

Still a jump down there, not as bad as some of the ones I have heard though, you mind tryin that sometime after it has been unplugged for say 20 minutes? I have heard it goes down with time. Just mainly still considering it.

Seablade

Hi Everyone,

I've been following the discussions here with interest, as I am thinking of buying a Sager 9860 and running linux on it. I think that we could make it easier for everyone if we have a place to document any thing where someone has got some part of the hardware going on linux. I've setup a wiki (little website that everyone can edit the pages on) to try and document any sucesses that people have had.

Please feel free to visit http://www.linuxworld.net.nz/wiki/in...title=Contents and change / add information on how to get linux going on the sager 9680. (it's new, so needs lots of stuff added)

I apoligise for any mis information on this, as I don't own a sager yet, I have not had any first hand expreience with them. I am just trying to help people summerise what works, what does not, and how to get things like sound, X.org, and Raid working.

Sounds like a good idea. I have gotten most of the hardware to work (atleast under Gentoo) and can post as detailed information as possible about that. I will try to get on doing that sometime today althought it looks as though it may be a busy day. Great idea and looks like the wiki is off to a good start.

-- Jon

Hey Nice Wiki
BTW I live in NZ
G32 if you can get that Gentoo info up and running I would really appreciate it as I have dloaded the latest version of Gentoo's live boot cd, but still cant get it to pick up my HDD. So I am eagerly awaiting instructions on how to do this (PLS make it detailed with such as the commands you use ect, as I am really a Linux Neophite :S )
Also I have a PATA/ATA drive and not a SATA drive, so I was wondering if you have a SATA drive or ATA drive, and if the instructions should work for both ?

In other words : PLS PLS PLS PLS PLS
Get those instructions up
COZ I cant wait!

And Nelg THNX for the Wiki site mate !!

Cheerz
KW

G32, Will you also pls inform us here on the forums when you have put up the info on how to get Gentoo running (on the Wiki site or here)
So that we may be able to jump into it asap

Many Thnx again.

Thanks for your wiki post about how to get wireless going

Thank's for your post about wireless networking. I really appriate it.

I've put up what I could dig up about getting x.org working on the wiki tonight as well. Does your touchpad scroll buttons work? As I've seen with many linux installs they do not work.

What types of partitions does the MP3 player on the front of the laptop support, anyone know?

From what I can gather, no one has actually got Raid 0 or 1 working with Linux yet, is that right?

Cheers
Glen

Hiya There Nelge.
Yes the drivers for Suse 9.1 do work correctly and it does pick up my Raid Stripe 0+1 Setup (You cannot Install Suse 9.1 in ATA mode)
Even if you only have 1 HDD you still can install Suse, just make sure your Bios is set up in Raid mode and in my case with one Harddrive, set it up in Raid Stripe 0+1 mode then it will install without a problem
My problem however is that Suse does not have support for the 6800GO or the Realtek Audio system :S
So I will try and get that working.

G32, I really want to run Gentoo on my Sager 9860, so can you please inform us on how you got Gentoo to detect your Promise 378 Controller and Harddrives as I cant get Gentoo to detect my Harddrive And if you have it running in ATA or RAID mode.
Also how did you install your 6800 GO ?
Many thnx in Advance

KW

I've been struggling with the sata_promise module in the 2004.x LiveCD. It seems that it detects the controller and calls it scsi0 and scsi1, but it also tells me that no devices are found on them. No /dev/sdx block devices are made, either. I'm running 2x60 GB SATA 7200 RPM in ATA mode, using the latest BIOS.

Are you sure those aren't PATA drives, in other words, IDE drives? My understanding is that the Promise SATA378 is working okay with SATA drives under the newer kernels, but the PATA drives aren't yet -- well maybe, with a patch.

Think you might have to either really dig in and get your hands dirty or be patient a bit -- bleeding edge hardware with Linux requires either patience or much frustration.

G32 where is that post of yours!? LOL
I am watching that Wiki site like a Hawk
Just wanna know how to get Gentoo running

Do you guys think G32 is ever going to post his installation guide?

Heres to hoping

Well, as I said before: as far as I know the PATA controller isn't working in Fedora or Gentoo as of yet. There is a SuSE 9 driver that should work. I don't have a PATA drive and as such I have no experience attempting to get the machine to run on one. I have a single SATA drive and it works fine with the Tx4Plus driver in the 2.6 kernel. On the up side, I can make a few suggestions centric to the Gentoo LiveCD. Which LiveCD are you using? I used 2004.2 with no boot paramaters. It might be worthwhile to use the most recent LiveCD with the boot line of:
Give that a shot and tell me what happens. There are other options (i.e. building a custom LiveCD with the devel libata drivers to see if that helps). I appologize if my previous statements mislead you and I will give you any help that I can. There are a few articles on the wiki now about Hyperthreading/ACPI as well as Wireless. If I can get my hands on a PATA hard drive, I will experiment with the controller in PATA mode but I'm short of cash as of current. I will look into the new libata releases and see what is on the horizion. Good luck and keep me posted on how the LiveCD with that boot parameter works.

-- Jon

Here is something to ponder:
The 9860 is based on the i915p/ICH6 chipsets. As such, at a base level they should adhere to a standard specification. The Promise controller seemed as though it would be flaky but works well with the SATA Tx2/Tx4 support. This driver is called sata_promise. I have had no problems so with my single SATA hard drive on this controller. There is another option available in the SCSI low-level driver section of the kernel config called "Intel PIIX/ICH SATA support". In conjunction there is a driver called the "Intel PIIXn chipsets support" under "ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support" in the kernel config. When I looked over my lshw and lspci -vv outputs I saw the following, here is a truncated output of the pertinant information:


So this looks for PATA hard drives. The ICH6 IDE controller (which should be the PATA controller) is recognized by the PIIX_IDE driver. If this driver isn't broken (at least for the ICH6, the kernel help referenced it as a ICH5 driver) then there should be some support for the PATA controller and it should function properly. Could someone with a PATA drive send an exported (and appropriately censored) copy of the System Information from Windows XP so I might be able to look over it? If this seems promising, I'll see what can be done to put together a custom LiveCD with the appropriate drivers included.

Given all of this, I'm still not sure the ICH6 controller is even being used at all for PATA. It appears the Tx2/Tx4 controller seems to cite that this controller has PATA + SATA ports and that PATA is currently broken. If this is the only controller being used, the ICH6 IDE might just be a stub that won't even be usable (at least not without a fair amount of work to expose the connector for it) but there seems to be PATA support in libata-dev queue (which could also be incorporated into a LiveCD). See http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.htm for some information about libata, ICH6, and the Promise Tx2/Tx4 driver.

What do you all think? Is anyone interested in a custom 9860 LiveCD? Does anyone have any experience making a LiveCD of this sort?

Edit:
UPDATE: There is a patch that seems to work on the 2.6.10-r4 kernel for PATA

This should result in a new kernel option being available for the PATA support. I'm not sure if it works, but it looks like it should. I also do not currently have the hardware to test it. I'll see what I can do however, wanted to keep everyone updated.

-- Jon

I think I've got something! I just downloaded SuSE 9.1 (yes, it's an older version, but you'll see why) and with the help of the SuSE 9.1 driver (first driver on http://www.promise.com/support/downl...ory=All&os=100), it detected my RAID! I am going to run this SuSE installation in rescue mode to see if I can get a Gentoo install working. Wish me luck!!!

Quick note -- I had to switch my mode to RAID in the BIOS....ata was not working with this driver

This is what I have also noticed. If you are running a RAID setup your best bet is to use SuSE 8 or 9.1 or RedHat 8. These operating systems are able to find the RAID because there are native Promise drivers for the card available for those operating systems. libata-dev seems as though it will work for PATA but I'm not sure where that leaves RAID on the 9860. I have heard that RAID doesn't work in anything but RedHat and SuSE. Thus, I assume that even from a SuSE installation, you won't be able to simply compile in support for RAID to the Gentoo kernel and then boot that. If there is support in the Gentoo kernel (or with a patch), do share the details and I will include it in the 9860 LiveCD so that those with RAID configurations might be able to boot right into a Linux environment with RAID support.

On a side note: this version/name skew is starting to get annoying. Does any one have specifics about this/these controller(s)? Does the ICH6 Southbridge take care of PATA or does the Promise controller? What is this controller called as I have heard it referred to as the SATA378/FastTrak 378, the FastTrak S150, as well as a "Promise Raid Controller PDC20378" (http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/n...ectedType=9860). Is there anything more definitive short of opening up this machine? If that is the only viable option, I will do so and post pictures somewhere. I'm not sure where as of yet. Perhaps that wiki will do well for the purpose. I've found it frustrating to work with thus far however. In any case: Good luck oeri, tell us if you find out anything.


-- Jon

HI G32 and thnx for the help
I have done research on the promise controller and it goes by many names:

PDC20378 is just the manufacturers chipset code for it.
Promise 3078 is the same as above
And FasTrak TX4000 chipset series is the chipset Family the 378 controller falls into.
Promise makes the the PDC20378 so that is why it is called Promise TastTrak.

But commonly it is just called FasTrak 378 controller.
This controller supports both PATA/SATA ports, but current Linux kernel distros only support the SATA ports and that is why Suse 9.1 with help from the Promise driver disk provided is able to detect my PATA drive, only when running in Raid mode in the bios. IF I run in ATA mode the installer will not detect the Hard Drive, so the Bios must be set to RAID for the dfriver to work :S

G32, if you can give me instructions on how to do the Kernel patch/update (where to get it from)you listed and how to get the gentoo installer to use it, I will try it out as I have a PATA drive.
With the Windows system information, will Server 2003 suffice for the info you are looking for?
As the only way I am able to install 2003 is again by putting the BIOS in ATA mode instead of RAID.

I will try to get that info up asap, just pls leave me some instructions on how and where to get the Kernel update patches and how to use them

Me and Nelg are also working on a way to build a Live Boot cd, and we think it is just a matter of copying over the Kernel image into an existing Live Boot cd's BOOT directory. Pls correct me if I am wrong, as making a customized Boot CD for the 9860 with all the needed Hardware drivers for sound ect allready integrated+Activated and ready to use, would be GREAT

Ill try to get the Win System INFO for you, but I'll have to reinstall it again :P


Many thnx and keep us updated

KW

Sorry I forgot to ask.
G32:
IF you can tell me where to get the Kernel and how to patch, and add it to an existing Live Boot CD such as Mepis or Yoper, I will give it a try and see what happens, but I first need instructions on which Kernel to use and where to dload it from, and then where to get the patch from, which steps /commands to use to patch it, and lastly where to put it onto the Live Boot Disk (Mepis/Gentoo/Yoper) to try it out on the 9860.

And about making the 9860's own live boot disk, I am all for that if we can do it and hopefully we can get it done with the latest Kernel and PATA/SATA support

KW

can someone try tracking down and trying the pdc-ultra driver? this is distributed on promise's website for use with suse 8.x

i have an alienware 7700 but it's basically the same thing...
been trying with no success at getting a gentoo liveCD (2004.2 min, and 2004.3 full) to recognize my PATA drives to be recognized, same old flakely promise SATA controller issues.

i'd rebuild the kernel with the patch posted above to try it but it's kinda hard to test without the hard drive to boot from

g32, you said you wouldn't mind some windows system information with regards to a PATA drive person but what were you looking for? Windows does pick up the drives as 'SCSI'(SATA) drives even though they are really PATA drives
driver: c:\windows\system32\drivers\ulsata.sys for WinXP Promise SATA378 (tm) IDE Controller

if anyone actually gets a working gentoo PATA install, i'd be much oblidged if you created a liveCD for people (like me!) without the resources to currently do so