[clug] Nightmare that is NForce2 on Linux

[David Tulloh]

The problem is with the IO with linux, it was introduced in 2.5 and I
believe 2.4.22.  I had it for a while, I was hoping that they would fix it
in 2.6.  LKML was aware of the problem, I'm not sure if they have fixed it
though.

To stop the problem you need to disable local APIC.  This needs to be done
in the boot kernel options.
for asus, people reported that: "noapic nolapic acpi=off" was required
personally I found just nolapic did the trick, but I don't have an asus

There was also dicussions on the greater internet about a patch that fixed
it for 2.4.22, and people reporting that bios updates fixed it.  I haven't
tried either so don't know if it does/doesn't work.


David


> Dear List,
>
> I just sent my server back to the computer shop for a new motherboard,
> only to find that the symptoms go away under XP.
>
> Motherboard is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe (NForce2).
>
> The main problem is if you do something silly like copy a partition to a
> second drive (such as with dd), you lock the machine after a couple of
> seconds. Onboard IDE controllers, master to master. I have gotten plenty
> of kernel messages about unexpected interrupts before, and I suspect
> that I'm generating lots of them when I do heavy I/O. Also using the
> onboard LAN ports does the same thing but I just ended up with PCI
> cards.
>
> The problem gets worse over time, once upon a time it didn't happen at
> all. So I suspect it's a real hardware problem that XP handles more
> gracefully than Linux (2.4.22). Convincing the shop to swap motherboards
> will be tricky since Linux is going to be the culprit in their eyes.
>
> The binary-only drivers are a real turn-off too.
>
> Anybody else had one of these mobos running Linux? They're supposed to
> be the best Athlon motherboard you can get for your typical desktop
> machine. But I'm about to recommend that nobody ever try to run Linux on
> them. I can't access four of my six USB ports and they lock the machine
> with a burner attached. Fortunately IEEE-1394 works perfectly.
>
> Have fun,
> Darren
>