[SLE] SuSE 10.0 on a Dell Dimension 9150 w/SATA drives -- Success!!
- From: Buddy Coffey <bcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:31:08 -0700
Yesterday I installed SuSE 10.0 (32-bit) on a new Dell Dimension 9150. While all turned out ok in the end, there were a couple of traps along the way.
System: Pentium D (Dual Core) 3.0 GHz
4 GB RAM
Radeon X600 Graphics Card
24" Wide Screen Monitor
2 x 300 GB SATA drives
Onboard Intel Gigabit ethernet controller (82573L)
CD-RW, DVD-/+R
1. I wanted to run the drives in SATA mode, not compatibility mode. I found out (after MUCH trial and error) that I needed to use the 'irqpoll' kernel parameter during the install.
2. After the initial install, I re-booted and when KDE/X started, all I got was a blank screen. Not only was the screen blank, the whole system was locked. I couldn't even switch to a virtual console to diagnose the problem.
So, I ran the rescue system, mounted my installation to /mnt and did a 'chroot'/mnt'. I ran YaST to change the window manager to 'console' and re-booted. Now I had a console to work with.
Long story short, I had set the resolution of my monitor to 1920 x 1200 and X.org barfed at that. I fixed the problem by downloading the fglrx driver from ATI, building the driver, running fglrxconfig, changing the window manager back to 'kdm,' and re-booted. Got a VERY nice screen this time (1600 x 1200 - fglrx doesn't support 1920 x 1200 -- oh well).
3. Once I had Linux running, I found out I had no ethernet connection! To make another long story short, the e1000 driver that ships with SuSE 10.0 didn't support the Intel 82573L chip. I downloaded source for the e1000 driver from Intel, compiled and installed, and it worked right out of the box.
4. On the 'good news side,' I have my drives running in SATA model (with AHCI), nice 1,600 x 1,200 display, and I am connected to the internet!
I've just begun testing this configuration, and I must say that I am VERY impressed with the dual-core technology. SuSE 10.0 correctly detected my two processors and loaded the bigsmp kernel. I have one scientific application for which I can select the number of processors. With one processor, the program runs in 62 seconds with 99.5% utilization of one processor. With two processors, the
program runs in 38 seconds with 85-90% utilization of both processors.
I hope this short review helps anyone considering buying a Dimension 9150 for Linux. If I had to do it over, I would probably not have fiddled with SATA and gone to compatibility mode. And, I would have gotten an nVidia card rather than ATI.
(But this is my wife's computer -- I just popped in a second hard drive to run Linux when she's not around!)
Buddy Coffey Advanced Electromagnetics
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- References:
- RE: [SLE] ATI Drivers and SuSE 10
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- Re: [SLE] ATI Drivers and SuSE 10
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- Re: [SLE] ATI Drivers and SuSE 10
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