I have been having a terrible time getting suse or any distro of linux to be able to see my hard drives. Vista is on a partition, but even if I disconnect that hard drive, it still doesn’t see the other.
I have an
xfx 750a motherboard;AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+BE OC to 2.9ghz;2g of 1066 ram not OC actually at 800; HITACHI Deskstar 320GB SATA Hard Drive;WD Caviar 250GB SATA;LG DVD Burner GH22NS30;Lite-on IDE SOHC-5236V DVD-ROM/CD Burner;EVGA 8800gt.
order on easus partition manager
Disk 1 250g WD
1.Vista Apps,Drive F=126.95g
2.Vista ,Drive C=51.76
2.Restore ,Drive G=9.77
4.Bootsak ,Drive D=44.41
This has always been done in sata mode, I have tried it in ACHI mode, but got the BSOD when I booted windows. I ran across another poster on the nvforums that has been have having trouble with this exact motherboard and is much more knowledgeable than me. I am going to try what he wrote, but I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas before I switched into raid mode.
Oh in his post he said something about having to reverse the order of the drives. I was thinking that maybe this might have something to do with suse not seeing the drives.
Any thoughts or help would be appreciated.
this is the link to the other forum nforce 750a sata_nv problem - nV News Forums
I am going to try a boot manager called GAG this weekend and then if that doesn’t work I’ll try fdisk. I kind of have a feeling it is vista’s partition manager messing everything up.
When you say ‘see’ what do you mean? Looking at the forum you point to it seems you are trying to use a live CD is that right? Is it KDE or GNOME. When you say it can’t ‘see’ the hard drive what exactly happens
Sorry about that. I changed what I wrote several times and I guess I got blind to what I was typing. Although, I do remember that I never included the part about gnome.
Yes that is correct. I tried using gnome and the dvd version’s,the 64bit versions. On the dvd version, I think I used gnome on it to.
Is it possible that since I used the vista partition manager to format and and partition that this is causing the issue?
So you have two HDD drive do the BIOS recognize both drives ?
Where did you like to install linux on second HDD ?
CAn you change the boot order of the disk ore mimic a IDE drive ?
Partitioning can also be done by Partition maqic a utility for Windos user but it is not free ware or gparted is free ware
both can make a lot of different file systems.
Both utilities are power full , and can do anything you found
dobby9
Yea, I have two hard drives. I have vista on one and was trying to put Suse on the other hard drive.
I have tried changing the boot order, but I am not sure about mimicking an ide drive. This motherboard has all sorts of features, so it probably can, I just don’t know how.
I just tried again last night after using EasyBCD to mess with the boot file, but it didnt matter. When I have both hard drives in, I get the initramfs error with Ubuntu and Suse doesn’t see the hard drives no matter if I have one or both hard drives plugged in. Suse doesn’t ever give that an error.
I had a flash drive this time and Suse saw it. The FD is formatted in ntfs format.
Delete partitions /dev/sda/ 4.9gb Resize impossible due to inconsistant fs. Try checking fs under windows.
delete /dev/sda2
delete /dev/sda5
create swap partition /dev/sda/ 2.0gb
create root partiton /dev/sda2 5.0gb
create partition /dev/sda3/ 533.4mb for home with ext3
I was using the flash drive for readyboost,so that might be the error it was seeing.
I just downloaded gpart. I going to take a look at it, tonight. As for Partiton Magic,I used to wonder why anyone pay that much and now that I’m moving on to Dual OS, I understand perfectly. Unfortunately, christmas and everything has me strapped for cash, but I will probably end up getting it after the new year.Maybe,I’ll run across some coupons by then.
Thankyou for the pointers
Whoa! If the kernel does not “see” (as in, “detect”) the drives, then partitions and boot loaders and DE’s have nothing to do with anything. So . . . are you saying that you managed to actually complete an installation (you said you used the DVD)? Please just describe exactly what you did with openSUSE and what exactly is happening now.
When I put in the dvd, I get all the through the process till the hard drive stage.It doesn’t matter if I choose gnome or kde,it doesn’t detect either of my hard drives and I have to abort every time I try.
The listing (dev/sda/ is just for the flash drive, that I happen to leave in this time.
I guess suse could have been installed on my flash drive if I would have continued.
I see where I made it confusing, the boot order I was referring to was for the hard drives and then I referred to EasyBCD, dobby9 asked
So you have two HDD drive do the BIOS recognize both drives ?Where did you like to install linux on second HDD ?
CAn you change the boot order of the disk ore mimic a IDE drive
The easybcd was point less, I thought maybe something was going on with the boot files. I am just doing different things trying to learn.
I hopped into my bios just now looking to see if I could make the hard drives mimic ide. I think they are already recognized as ide. The sata port 1 hard drive is listed as Third Ide Master and the second hard drive under sata port 2 is listed as fourth ide master. I don’t know what that means, other than the master part. I would think the second hard drive should be a slave drive.
This could be the reason why I have to disconnect one drive when using Ubuntu before I can get to the GUI part of the install. I am starting to think there is an issue with the controller.
I am going to try in just a little while to disconnect just my ide cd burner and run the livecd(gnome), this will leave only sata devices (2 sata hard drives and a sata dvd burner).
Try this: Boot the installation DVD and then do Ctrl-Alt-F2 (or F9); you will be at a root prompt. Then do:
cd /var/log
more boot.msg
lspci
That will scroll the kernel log, and the lspci will list the primary hardware; look for the chipset and disk controller, especially whether a SATA controller is shown or just an IDE controller. In the kernel log look for loading of the kernel’s disk controller drivers. Probably you will see scsi and libata, and another that is specific to the chipset on your motherboard (for example, if the chipset is nvidia you’ll see “sata_nv”, etc.). Then you should see the disk controller initialized and detection attempted, e.g., a scsi0 and sata1. It’s possible you will see the drivers loaded but nothing detected, or that you won’t see this at all because there is a problem in communicating with the disk controller. Some controllers are dual IDE/PATA-SATA; from your bios description, could be the case. If in the bios it’s set to IDE emulation (also called “legacy”) but the drives are SATA, that could be the problem. Or it may be that the bios needs to be set to AHCI, which is the for the newer SATA specification.
I would change the bios setting to AHCI and try installing. If the disks are recognized and you install, you may be able to switch it back to SATA or whatever Windows requires and Linux may still boot once installed (don’t ask). Otherwise, do some googling on the chipset (specifically, the Southbridge if it lists it) and linux installation; you probably will find the key.
Either I did something wrong or something is wrong. When I tried what you wrote all I got was file or directory no found for each one. I think I messed up with the cd one, I didn’t space after it, so it would have looked like
cd/var/log instead of cd /var/log
I’ll try that one again.
I would just go ahead and do it before I post, but I wanted to get your opinion. I managed changed the bios to ahci. The motherboard also has an option enable Linux DID support, which I did, but unfortunately it didn’t change anything. The hard drives still were not visible and disconnecting the sata dvd burner did not change a thing. In fact during the process it ask me to put the install cd in the main drive.
My question is, if I go ahead and do this, Is there any special commands or any thing I need to do before I try?
I’ll go ahead and give the cd a go before I do it though, I’m curious if not spacing was the cause.
When you do Ctrl-Alt-F2 you should be switched to a console and see a # prompt, do this command:
ls
And you should see some directories listed, including /var. That way you know you are in fact in a console. Then the commands should work.
In your posts you have made reference to both an install CD and DVD. I presume it is the DVD. I haven’t tested the above using the CD, only the DVD.
What you found re the MS requirement and AHCI is not surprising, and is somewhat analagous to Linux. I’m surprised you have to reinstall Vista to make the change though; can’t you use the Vista Recovery Environment command line shell to change the Registry?
I looked at the thread at nvnews and I think it fair to conclude you are looking in the right area - bios setting vis-a-vis disk controller vis-a-v-is the kernel, specific to the 750a chipset - but given that that user had a RAID setup, we can’t directly extrapolate to your situation. Once you set your bios to AHCI, and working off the theory that the linux kernel needs to use the ahci driver instead of sata_nv, then when you look at the kernel log check which driver the kernel is loading. If it is sata_nv and not ahci, you can try this: On the DVD menu below there is a place to type Boot Options, type this:
brokenmodules=sata_nv insmod=ahci
That may force the kernel to use the ahci driver. If you are seeing a timeout error - the kernel will say it is trying to detect on a channel and getting slow response, eventually it gives up - then swap the SATA drive cables on the ports. There are known issues with some controllers having the quirk, with a given drive cabling setup, of being slow to respond and timing out. If you see this, you can also try installing from 11.1 RC1 with its newer kernel.
Alrighty, I’m back, Think I ate to much turkey yesterday. I fell asleep at about 1am and woke up at 1pm without waking up once. I never sleep that solid or long.
Ok, The space after cd was the key after typing cd var/log in the /# line, the next line was cd/var/ # , then I typed more boot.msg. That pulled up a huge list that I am unable to repeat. I wish there was a way to save it all. I didnt see anything about nvidia.I did write down a few things, but the main was I believe had to with sata
ata/Sata Link up 3.0Gps (sstatus 123 Scontrol 300)
ata/ qctimeout (amd 0xec) there was a long list of those with it trying to change it 1.5gps, then it changed it tried
setting latency timer of device 0000:00:06.0to64
scsi 6: pata_amd
scsi 7: pata_amd
other things I noticed were
<6>scanning Numa toplogy in Northbridge 24
<6>No Numa cinfiguration found
<6>faking Node at 0000000_00000130000
<6>ACPI: interpreter enabled
<6>ACPI: supports S0 S1 S2 S3 S4 S5
<6>ACPI:using APIC for interuppt routing
<3> Error attaching device data
<3>Error attaching Device Data
<3>Error attaching Device Data
<6>ACPI: Transparent Bridge PCI01
<7>ACPI: PCI Interrupt routing table
<6>interupt link [NRA](IRQ 16,17,18,19)disabled
then there is a huge list like the that one with mostly disabled
I’ll check again especially for Nvidia. I was a bit over whelmed when I saw the list and forgot to look for it.
In the bios there is setting for AHCI mode that lets you enable LINUX DID support. When I had installed Vista with that the linux DID support on, I thought that caused the error in vista install, so I just reinstalled in sata mode.
Are your SATA drive’s speed and the bios setting in sync? The mobo controller supports 3Gb. The drives need to be jumpered accordingly (3Gb drives can be jumpered for 3Gb or 1.5Gb). If the drives are 1.5Gb, the bios needs to be set to 1.5Gb, too.
Also, try adding the following to the Boot Options on the DVD menu:
irqpoll
or
pci=routeirq
And give the bios AHCI setting a try per my prev post, with both that Linux flag on or off, if it can be toggled)
Afterthought . . . since the kernel log is not familiar to you and it would be very difficult to capture that log for posting back here from behind the DVD installation process, let me suggest that you download the Live-CD and boot from it. It will load the OS without needing to recognize the drives. If you do that, then get into a terminal window immediately after the gui is up and do:
dmesg
And then copy/paste the output to nopaste.com or a similar site, then post that url back here (or worst case, post the content back here but that will require several posts). I’ll then be able to look at it and probably be able to see what is failing. If you need to upload the dmesg output as a file, the command would be:
I received the dmesg and am analyzing it. For now:
Please try moving the drive from SATA port 5 to port 1 and booting. And in the dmesg boot, was 1 of the drives disconnected?
The dmesg you sent was with booting after setting the bios to AHCI, correct?
Try booting with pci=routeirq (you typed irqroute last time, that’s wrong).
Did you try booting with irqpoll?
If you haven’t yet, try changing that bios setting to SATA and boot. Please confirm result. If it fails, please send me that dmesg also with the notation that it is with the SATA bios setting. I want to see how the kernel handles that bios change.
Is it possible to change that bios setting to IDE? If so, try that and booting. (I know it sounds strange.)
Do you have a manual for the bios on the board that can explain the “Linux DID” option? I googled that but of course “DID” is the word “did” and I got a zillion hits. Maybe if you at least have the bios vendor and version? If the utility “hwinfo” is on the CD, we can get it - boot from the CD, open a terminal window, switch to root (“su” w/o quotes), and do:
hwinfo --bios
Or download free SiSoft Sandra for Windows (a great tool to have anyway), it will tell you.
I’ll await your post back, continuing to analyze the dmesg . . .
What I typically do in cases like this, is use the video mode in my digital camera. I set it up to take a video, … start taking the video, and then I launch the action that causes the error.
When ever I try any installation on my PC, I have my camera handy. It has done wonders for my troubleshooting efforts, and my ability to go back days later, with a cooler head and a fresh night of sleep, and find out what my previous problem was.
Thanks for the suggestion. In this case, dmesg is 500 lines long and OP is unfamiliar with reading kernel logs. So he is emailing me entire captured text.
I had changed to sata port 5 yesterday, because while I was looking at the motherboard xfx had colored sata port 5 and sata port 6 white, the rest were black. I thought maybe these were meant to be the main ones. All testing done before yesterday was on sata port 1 and 2, which I will move back them back to immediately.
http://www.motherboards.org/imageview.html?i=/images/reviews/motherboards/1801_p5_11.jpg
I’ll download the files for the bios right now and check for what linux did support means.I have sisost sandra downloading right now. Sorry for taking so long, I dozed off waiting waiting to see if the email went through before I did anything. For some reason my email provider attaches the email as a file to the email, so I was sure if it would go after it failing twice with an attachment that I made. I know that sounds confusing.
Thankyou oldcpu,
I didnt think of that, I did consider using my webcam but that doesnt do any good if the computer is off.
I copied the bios info from sandra. It gives two. I know the version is correct, cause I flashed it a month or so ago when the update came out.I tried copying, but it made it 13,000 characters to long,lol.
Bios Version : Ver1.1
System BIOS : American Megatrends Inc. 080015