Install woes with 2004.3 LiveCD - sata nForce3

markusw · n00b Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 17

Hello all,

I seem to be having a somewhat typical experience installing Gentoo for AMD64 on a Gigabyte K8NSNXP (nForce3-250 chipset). Neither the SATA HD nor the on-board NIC are recognised.

BIOS is at latest version (F9)
SATA and CDROM drives are recognised by the BIOS during initial boot
RAID is turned off in the BIOS

I have tried 'noapic' and 'doscsi' boot options. 'doscsi' causes a hang while scanning for sata_sis.

The nForce3-250 chipset is recognised as is the IDE CDROM (/dev/hda)

The 2004.2 LiveCD fix of 'modprobe ide-disk' returns the error 'Module ide_disk not found'. Note that the underscore (_) instead of the dash (-)!

I tried 'modprobe sata_nv' but this just hangs.

As far as networking goes, 'modprobe forcedeth' followed by 'net-setup' gets the nic recognised but I'm not sure that it's working correctly because ifconfig says that it's address is 192.168.0.2 whereas our DHCP server dishes out addresses in the 192.168.1.* space. Of course trying to ping any other machine on the network results in an error 'Network is unreachable'.

Is there any kind soul out there that might be able to shed some light on this?

Thanks in advance - and happy new year!

taskara · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 4:48 am Post subject:

have you tried the 2004.3 livecd?

2004.2 livecd did work for me on my nf3 nv_sata system. but it was a while ago now

can you try disconnecting the cdroms from sata? I don't think linux has support for that yet, and maybe that's causing a problem.. just a thought
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tiarc · n00b Joined: 30 Oct 2004 Posts: 15

2004.3 was much better at detecting my sata drive (Hitachi) than 2004.2. I didn't need modprobe-ide nor did I have to modprobe forcedeth. While I did manage to get 2004.2 to full install it continued to have odd problems on my MSI K8N Neo2. 2004.3 has been rock steady. One difference I do seem to recall is that 2004.2 would show my drive as an /dev/hd* while 2004.3 has it more properly listed as /dev/sda# devices

markusw · n00b Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 17

Thanks tiac,

I should have made it clear in the body of my post. I am using the 2004.3 LiveCD. I mentioned it in the subject line though!

I have progressed somewhat.
As far as the sata drive goes. I disabled in the BIOS the other on-board sata controller. Now when I modprobe sata_nv, it doesn't hang and I get a /dev/sda HD. BTW, the 'doscsi' option still hangs while searching for sata_sis.

The eth0 seems to have fixed itself as well. I can ping other machines on the network.

I am having problems now with Grub not recognising sda3 and/or block 0,0. I'll hunt about in the forums to see how far I can get.

Cheers!

nightm4re · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 9:40 pm Post subject:

currently attempting to do the same for my parents new system.. of course, it's kind of pointless, as they aren't going to want to use anything but windows (ive tried selling them, they don't get it).

as far as your network goes, its becuase it's automatically designed to use a set ip. when the livecd starts, edit /etc/conf.d/net, comment out the line for iface_eth0 and uncomment the line that says iface_eth0=dhcp.

i'm kind of confused as to why disabling serial ata in the bios will allow the module to be loaded and thus usable? what is the purpose of a disable in the bios if it doens't relaly disable anything?
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racoontje · Veteran Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 1290

Just in case you care, the name for the ethernet is "forcedeth"

MarsDude · n00b Joined: 24 May 2002 Posts: 19

boot the 2004.3 livecd with 'gentoo noapic'

do an lsmod to see if sata_nv is loaded after that. If it isn't, modprobe it... it probably will not hang this time.