Hi Guys,
I have Linux running great again at home, I thought I would post the steps
that I went through to get it working, I know you all probably know this,
but anyway....
Hardware : Intel P4 2.5gig, Intel 845G Chipset, 512MB DDR 333Mhz, Leadtek
Ti4200 128MB DDR
Problems : Linux would not boot, X would not recognise my video card, My
Chipset was not fully supported and thus DMA was not enabled.
Solutions :
Installing Linux - Firstly as you all know, I could not boot Linux at all, I
found through other groups that adding mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=510M@1M
(where 510M=total memory -1) fixed the issue.
To get the installer of your favourite distro working I appended this line
to the Linux start-up command, so it would be : Linux mem=exactmap
mem=640K@0 mem=510M@1M.
If you X configuration fails, don't worry, just set it to the correct
settings and set the boot mode to text, this will make it easier when
loading the driver latter.
Once you have installed, you need to modify your boot settings to include
the above parameters, I used grub because I could not get LILO to accept
mem=exactmap (complained about requiring a numerical value).
When booting press e to edit your boot options, append the above line, once
booted remember to modify your appropriate grub config file, its menu.lst in
Mandrake.
* Note to mandrake(& Redhat?) users, I could not get lilo working, so be
careful using the rescue mode off the install CD as it will re-install lilo
and not grub if you replace the boot loader, any ideas on getting lilo to
work anyone ?
X Configuration - X was unable to use the nv driver for my card, this was
easy as I was going to replace the driver with NVIDIA's anyway.
Go to www.nvidia.com, download 1x Kernel and 1x GLX driver, they must be
matching, I recommend getting the source from the page.
Make install both the kernel and the GLX driver, the module should load and
complain about tainting your GPL license, this is good as it means that the
kernel module is ready to go.
Modify you XF86config-4 file and replace the driver line nv with nvidia,
save and you should be able to now start X.
Cool, Now I had Linux installed and video, but it really performed sluggish
(no pun intended).
DMA, Chipset Support - The version of the kernel I was using is
2.4.19-16mdk, this version was unable to detect my IDE chipset correctly,
this means no DMA, not a good thing with a modern machine.
To test for DMA support I downloaded hdparm from
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/hardware/ you can check to see the
status of your drive by running hdparm /dev/hda (substitute this for your
HDD), to test the drive run hdparm -tT /dev/hda, it only was getting
3.2mb/sec before changing my kernel :-(
After some trawling of the newsgroups I found a post by Alan Cox, suggesting
to use 2.4.19-ac4, I don't know if this is the best version to use (any
feedback?)
Now the 2.4.19-ac4 patch was against the official release of 2.4.19, so I
download the release version of the Kernel from www.kernel.org and then Alan
Cox's patch from the same site.
Then, since it has been awhile since I last recompiled my Kernel, I read the
instructions at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html :-), this
document covers everything you need to know, read it carefully.
The kernel patch was applied using patch -p1 (something like this, zcat
patchfile.gz | patch -p1 or patch -p1 < patch if it is uncompressed), Alan
uses kernel.vanilla as his base directory so remember the -p1 option.
Since I was recompiling I took the opportunity to choose the correct
processor type and make some other minor changes.
Now with the new kernel installed, as per the instructions at www.tldp.org,
hdparm was returning a result around 10x higher (I can't remember the exact
figure), and the system finally started to feel like a 2.5 gig P4 Linux
Beast :-)
Things left to do : find some nice LM monitoring software, tweak my video
card (I think its registry.c ?), load my windows games using wineX, work out
how to make grub look pretty (graphical) and install my LCD I ordered from
CrystalFontz
Thanks
Brett
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
