AMD 64 And VIA VT8251On Linux

I needed to update by development server, which is also a home network server, which has Samba, NFS, autofs, NIS as well as the usual LAMP stack, and CVS, subversion, and other tools.

The move was to be  synchronized with my moving from Mandriva to Ubuntu server as well.

Pentium 4 with ASUS P4S8X-MX

Initially, I bought a nice used Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, but it it was unstable and kept rebooting under load. Later, I found out that  the  CPU was defective  and  I am waiting for Intel to send me a replacement. The machine is also based on ASUS P4S8X-MX, which has no lm-sensors support, so CPU and motherboard temperatures and fan speed cannot be monitored on Linux.

AMD-64 with ASUS A8V-MX

Meanwhile, I could not wait for this, and went out and bought a custom built AMD 64 based  system. I settled on the ASUS A8V-MX as a nice inexpensive motherboard with integrated graphics, and 4 SATA ports. I opted for a SATA disk, but Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Linux would not see the disk at all.

It turned  out to be that the VIA VT8251 south bridge chipset is not supported by current Linux kernels, although some patches  exist (see links below).

The  workarounds  require either installing to an IDE disk, patching the kernel and then installing to the SATA disk, or using a floppy drive, which I  do not have in this machine.

AMD-64 with ASUS A8V

It was easier for me to exchange the motherboard with an ASUS A8V which works flawlessly, but requires an add on video card (irrelevant for a server), 2 less SATA connectors, and a Gigabit ethernet.

Everything on this motherboard works, including lm-sensors. Of course, I  have not tested sound since this is a server.

I think the VT8251 patch will make it by 2.6.18.

This is a slashdot posting I made on the topic above.

Resources

• A lengthy posting on the VT8251 on VIAArena, VIA's community forums.
• Linux  IDE mailing list on Bastiaan Jacques adding support for AHCI.
• An older patch for the VIA8251 chipset to be correctly recognized.
• Instructions and  patches on how to install on a VT8251 SATA drive.
• A guide on installing Fedora Core 5 x86_64 on a SATA disk with a VIA VT8251 controller. This relies on a floppy drive to add the driver.  Here is how to use a driver from a floppy (Red Hat specific).
• Another site about the VT8251 and SATA problem.