Asus P5n-e Sli

[cokray]

Hello,

First, thanks for the excellent article about the P5N-E - it convinced me to order one for my Linux box. So far I'm very happy with it, I'm running Mandriva Linux 2007.1, which seems to work quite well, except for one thing. I can't seem to get lmsensors working. Could you post which modules you loaded to get it to work?

Thanks!

-Chad

[Michael]

Hello,

First, thanks for the excellent article about the P5N-E - it convinced me to order one for my Linux box. So far I'm very happy with it, I'm running Mandriva Linux 2007.1, which seems to work quite well, except for one thing. I can't seem to get lmsensors working. Could you post which modules you loaded to get it to work?

Thanks!

-Chad

The sensors configuration file isn't backed up, but if you run sensors-detect and probe everything it should find them.

[cokray]

The sensors configuration file isn't backed up, but if you run sensors-detect and probe everything it should find them.

I tried that first, it detected this:

Driver `eeprom' (should be inserted):
  Detects correctly:
  * Bus `NVIDIA i2c adapter 1 at 1:00.0'
    Busdriver `UNKNOWN', I2C address 0x50 (and 0x51 0x52 0x53 0x54 0x55 0x56 0x57)
    Chip `EDID EEPROM' (confidence: 8)

  EEPROMs are *NOT* sensors! They are data storage chips commonly
  found on memory modules (SPD), in monitors (EDID), or in some
  laptops, for example.

Driver `it87' (should be inserted):
  Detects correctly:
  * ISA bus, address 0x290 (Busdriver `i2c-isa')
    Chip `ITE IT8718F Super IO Sensors' (confidence: 9)

Driver `coretemp' (should be inserted):
  Detects correctly:
  * Chip `Intel Core family thermal sensor' (confidence: 9)

And then it told me to run the add the following to rc.local or something:

#----cut here----
# I2C adapter drivers
# modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 0 at 1:00.0
# modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 1 at 1:00.0
# modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter 2 at 1:00.0
modprobe i2c-isa
# Chip drivers
modprobe eeprom
modprobe it87
# Warning: the required module coretemp is not currently installed
# on your system. For status of 2.6 kernel ports check
# http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/Devices. If driver is built
# into the kernel, or unavailable, comment out the following line.
modprobe coretemp
# sleep 2 # optional
/usr/local/bin/sensors -s # recommended
#----cut here----

Problem is, after doing all that, running "sensors" returns this:

No sensors found!
Make sure you loaded all the kernel drivers you need.
Try sensors-detect to find out which these are.

All of the modules, except for coretemp, successfully loaded. Coretemp may be built into my kernel.

So now I'm stuck. Mandiva came with lm_sensors-2.10.2, so I downloaded and built 2.10.3 - same result. And that's where I am now...

[cokray]

Self follow up: I figured it out. My kernel version was apparently too old, after upgrading from 2.6.17 to 2.6.21 the sensors started working.

[scroll]

In case anyone may find this useful, I installed Fedora 7 x86_64 on this motherboard and these are my experiences.

Hardware

Motherboard: ASUS P5N-E SLI
Processor: Intel Quad Core Q6600
RAM: 8GB (4x2GB) Patriot PC2-6400 PDC24G6400ELK
Video: EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB

Install

I burned the rescue CD and used it to install over NFS. No real issues with installation, but I was not prompted to configure X. This may be due to the fact that I used the VNC install method.

Nvidia Drivers

Apparently (?) the Nvidia drivers are not compatible with Zen kernels, so I edited /etc/grub.conf and changed to a non-zen kernel and rebooted.

I installed the prerequisite kernel-devel and xorg-x11-server-sdk packages:

yum install kernel-devel kernel-doc xorg-x11-server-sdk

I then installed the NVIDIA drivers by hand, but had to use this command line to install them in the correct location:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-9755-pkg2.run --x-module-path=`X -showDefaultModulePath 2>&1 | cut -d, -f1` --x-library-path=`X -showDefaultLibPath 2>&1`

See http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72490 for more info.

Note that with the latest drivers, I only had to do:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.09-pkg2.run

Sound

Sound has been a real issue. Running quake4, I sometimes had sound, sometimes not. I tried adding "+set s_driver oss", but that didn't seem to help the reliability. Fooling around with system-config-soundcard, and with possible help from a "yum update", I seem to have sound. Mostly. Occasionally it stutters for several seconds and then recovers. KDE (arts) recently started complaining about an error initializing the sound driver, but sound in quake4 seems to work as before (with occasional stutters).

Stability

System was initially stable until I started running quake4. Usually within minutes I would experience a hard lock and had to punch the reset button. I played with the RAM voltage, and it got more stable as I upped it. I think I went two or three steps above 2 volts, but it still locked up, though less frequently.

I eventually gave up and set the RAM speed to 667 MHz. When the speed was set to 800MHz, the BIOS had autoset set the timings to 5-5-5-12-2T. At 667 MHZ, it appears to now be 5-5-5-10-1T. No lockups yet.

Yum libraw1394 Issue

Yum update recently failed with:

[root@pika ~]# yum update
...
--> Processing Conflict: libraw1394 conflicts kernel < 2.6.21-1.3194.fc7
Error: No Package Matching kernel.x86_64

Since I don't use IEEE-1394, I used this workaround:

yum --exclude=libraw1394 update

For reference, there is a bug report:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=244474

[davidletterboyz]

Hi, all! I'm a noob in linux and this is my first post in this forum

I'm wondering if anyone have tried Abit Fatal1ty 650i SLI mobo under linux (any distro) ? I'm planning to get a c2d setup with an o/cable mobo. Looks like most intel 965p chipsets don't go well with linux (correct me if I'm wrong!).

[Michael]

Hi, all! I'm a noob in linux and this is my first post in this forum

I'm wondering if anyone have tried Abit Fatal1ty 650i SLI mobo under linux (any distro) ? I'm planning to get a c2d setup with an o/cable mobo. Looks like most intel 965p chipsets don't go well with linux (correct me if I'm wrong!).

The Abit Fatal1ty should work fine as it uses the nForce 650i. Some 965 motherboards are notorious under Linux due to disk controller issues.

[davidletterboyz]

The Abit Fatal1ty should work fine as it uses the nForce 650i. Some 965 motherboards are notorious under Linux due to disk controller issues.

Hi, thanks for replying. Really appreciate it.

Offtopic: Do u think Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD with RX1250 built-in graphics is compatible? I was told that ATi chipset doesnt have good drivers with linux. Now I'm reading the article about ATi drivers...but that's for graphics card part. How about northbridge chipset?

[Thund]

Just a quick followup on the P5N-E board. It suffers from a non-standard DSDT. Its pretty easy to "fix" it; see this and this for some help on getting a proper DSDT compiled and installed.

G'luck.