[gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

I'm looking at upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, and looking at the
Asus P5B series of motherboards.  I've found a couple forum posts
(http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-494387-highlight-p965.html and
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-498160-highlight-p965.html) that
seem to indicate troubles with JMicron support in kernels.  Is this
something I should be concerned about?  The forum discussions seem to
indicate that the problem is unresolved, indicating to me that I
should look elsewhere for motherboards.

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[gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking at upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, and looking at the
> Asus P5B series of motherboards.  I've found a couple forum posts
> (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-494387-highlight-p965.html and
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-498160-highlight-p965.html) that
> seem to indicate troubles with JMicron support in kernels.  Is this
> something I should be concerned about?  The forum discussions seem to
> indicate that the problem is unresolved, indicating to me that I
> should look elsewhere for motherboards.
>


Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?
 Or am I wrong?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Richard Fish]

On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
> they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?

Well I don't own one of these things, but it looks like the SATA stuff
goes through the JMicron chip, while the RAID is provided by the 975.

It should be possible to get working, but I expect you'll have trouble
with installation. It looks like the JMicron SATA support was added in
2.6.18, so I wouldn't really expect the 2006.1 liveCD to use the chip
optimally, if at all.  You might end up hunting down a different live
CD, needing to stage it on a different system, or something else
similarly difficult.

-Richard
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Saturday 30 September 2006 00:52, Richard Fish wrote:
> On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
> > they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?
>
> Well I don't own one of these things, but it looks like the SATA stuff
> goes through the JMicron chip, while the RAID is provided by the 975.
>
> It should be possible to get working, but I expect you'll have trouble
> with installation. It looks like the JMicron SATA support was added in
> 2.6.18, so I wouldn't really expect the 2006.1 liveCD to use the chip
> optimally, if at all.  You might end up hunting down a different live
> CD, needing to stage it on a different system, or something else
> similarly difficult.

jmicron-support was added to 2.6.16. But I am not sure that it was added for 
ALL jmicron controller ;)
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

On 9/29/06, Richard Fish <bigfish@asmallpond.org> wrote:
> On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
> > they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?
>
> Well I don't own one of these things, but it looks like the SATA stuff
> goes through the JMicron chip, while the RAID is provided by the 975.

I thought it was the other way around?

Southbridge
 - 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
JMicron(r) JMB363 PATA and SATA controller
 - 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
 - 1 x Internal SATA 3.0 Gb/s port
 - 1 x External SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-Go)
 - Support SATA RAID 0, 1 and JBOD

(from http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1178&l1=3&l2=11&l3=307)

That seems to say that 4 SATA drives can go through the Southbridge
(P965, typo earlier, sorry)
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Richard Fish]

On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/06, Richard Fish <bigfish@asmallpond.org> wrote:
> > On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
> > > they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?
> >
> > Well I don't own one of these things, but it looks like the SATA stuff
> > goes through the JMicron chip, while the RAID is provided by the 975.
>
> I thought it was the other way around?

Maybe...as I said I don't have one of these beasties, and I was
inferring based on someone else's lspci output from the forums.

Either way, there is no guarantee, as 965 support still had issues until 2.6.18.

Anyway, some recent threads from -amd64 might be helpful:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.amd64/8975
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.amd64/8870/focus=8870
(ignore the "this isn't amd so go away" crap from the second one)

-Richard
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Mark Kirkwood]

Ryan Sims wrote:
> On 9/29/06, Richard Fish <bigfish@asmallpond.org> wrote:
>> On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
>> > they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?
>>
>> Well I don't own one of these things, but it looks like the SATA stuff
>> goes through the JMicron chip, while the RAID is provided by the 975.
> 
> I thought it was the other way around?
> 
> Southbridge
> - 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
> JMicron(r) JMB363 PATA and SATA controller
> - 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
> - 1 x Internal SATA 3.0 Gb/s port
> - 1 x External SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-Go)
> - Support SATA RAID 0, 1 and JBOD
> 
> (from 
> http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1178&l1=3&l2=11&l3=307) 
> 
> 
> That seems to say that 4 SATA drives can go through the Southbridge
> (P965, typo earlier, sorry)


Yeah - looks like it is for that board - as it uses ICH8 for plain old 
SATA and JMicron for RAID, other similar boards seem to use ICH8R for 
RAID and JMicron for plain old SATA... just to add to the confusion :-)

Cheers

Mark
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

On 9/29/06, Mark Kirkwood <markir@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> Ryan Sims wrote:
> > On 9/29/06, Richard Fish <bigfish@asmallpond.org> wrote:
> >> On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
> >> > they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?
> >>
> >> Well I don't own one of these things, but it looks like the SATA stuff
> >> goes through the JMicron chip, while the RAID is provided by the 975.
> >
> > I thought it was the other way around?
> >
> > Southbridge
> > - 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
> > JMicron(r) JMB363 PATA and SATA controller
> > - 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
> > - 1 x Internal SATA 3.0 Gb/s port
> > - 1 x External SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-Go)
> > - Support SATA RAID 0, 1 and JBOD
> >
> > (from
> > http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1178&l1=3&l2=11&l3=307)
> >
> >
> > That seems to say that 4 SATA drives can go through the Southbridge
> > (P965, typo earlier, sorry)
>
>
> Yeah - looks like it is for that board - as it uses ICH8 for plain old
> SATA and JMicron for RAID, other similar boards seem to use ICH8R for
> RAID and JMicron for plain old SATA... just to add to the confusion :-)
>

Confusion indeed ;)
So how well is the ICH8 southbride supported?  RAID isn't on my list
of things to worry about, so if I try just straight-up SATA drives,
will things work off of 2006.1, you think?


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/06, Mark Kirkwood <markir@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> > Ryan Sims wrote:
> > > On 9/29/06, Richard Fish <bigfish@asmallpond.org> wrote:
> > >> On 9/29/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> > Let me rephrase my question:  If I only use SATA drives, non RAID,
> > >> > they only run through the P975 southbridge, and I should be ok, right?
> > >>
> > >> Well I don't own one of these things, but it looks like the SATA stuff
> > >> goes through the JMicron chip, while the RAID is provided by the 975.
> > >
> > > I thought it was the other way around?
> > >
> > > Southbridge
> > > - 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
> > > JMicron(r) JMB363 PATA and SATA controller
> > > - 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
> > > - 1 x Internal SATA 3.0 Gb/s port
> > > - 1 x External SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-Go)
> > > - Support SATA RAID 0, 1 and JBOD
> > >
> > > (from
> > > http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1178&l1=3&l2=11&l3=307)
> > >
> > >
> > > That seems to say that 4 SATA drives can go through the Southbridge
> > > (P965, typo earlier, sorry)
> >
> >
> > Yeah - looks like it is for that board - as it uses ICH8 for plain old
> > SATA and JMicron for RAID, other similar boards seem to use ICH8R for
> > RAID and JMicron for plain old SATA... just to add to the confusion :-)
> >
>
> Confusion indeed ;)
> So how well is the ICH8 southbride supported?  RAID isn't on my list
> of things to worry about, so if I try just straight-up SATA drives,
> will things work off of 2006.1, you think?

Nuts, ignore that.  Just realized the optical drives will be PATA,
which goes through the JMicron.  Shoot.  Looks like I'll have to give
either kernelOfTruth's LiveCD a shot, or possibly roll my own.  Or
find a LiveCD for another distro that has 2.6.18 or so.  Hmm.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: JMicron confusion

[Mark Kirkwood]

Ryan Sims wrote:

> Nuts, ignore that.  Just realized the optical drives will be PATA,
> which goes through the JMicron.  Shoot.  Looks like I'll have to give
> either kernelOfTruth's LiveCD a shot, or possibly roll my own.  Or
> find a LiveCD for another distro that has 2.6.18 or so.  Hmm.
> 

Yep - see if you can find a USB cdrom to boot the live cd off.
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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Friday 29 September 2006 21:28, Ryan Sims wrote:
> I'm looking at upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, and looking at the
> Asus P5B series of motherboards.  I've found a couple forum posts
> (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-494387-highlight-p965.html and
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-498160-highlight-p965.html) that
> seem to indicate troubles with JMicron support in kernels.  Is this
> something I should be concerned about?  The forum discussions seem to
> indicate that the problem is unresolved, indicating to me that I
> should look elsewhere for motherboards.

I am using this one:
03:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI 
Controller

without any troubles.

It is important to have a fairly recent kernel. 
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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Duane Griffin]

On 29/09/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking at upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, and looking at the
> Asus P5B series of motherboards.  I've found a couple forum posts
> (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-494387-highlight-p965.html and
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-498160-highlight-p965.html) that
> seem to indicate troubles with JMicron support in kernels.  Is this
> something I should be concerned about?  The forum discussions seem to
> indicate that the problem is unresolved, indicating to me that I
> should look elsewhere for motherboards.

I'm running gentoo on exactly this setup. There was some trouble with
support for the controller prior to 2.6.18, however it all works just
fine if you use the "all-generic-ide irqpoll" boot parameters.

Another issue you might run into is getting the onboard RTL8168
ethernet controller working. There is no in-kernel driver for this
thing. I managed to get the vendor-supplied driver compiling, but
isn't working correctly for me (it seems to be transmitting packets
fine but not receiving anything). I've not looked into it much since
there seems to be in-kernel support coming soon and I've got another
ethernet controller card to use in the meantime. There are also lots
of reports from people getting it working successfully, so it may just
be something stupid I'm doing.

> Ryan W Sims

Cheers,
Duane.

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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

On 9/30/06, Duane Griffin <duaneg@dghda.com> wrote:
> On 29/09/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm looking at upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, and looking at the
> > Asus P5B series of motherboards.  I've found a couple forum posts
> > (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-494387-highlight-p965.html and
> > http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-498160-highlight-p965.html) that
> > seem to indicate troubles with JMicron support in kernels.  Is this
> > something I should be concerned about?  The forum discussions seem to
> > indicate that the problem is unresolved, indicating to me that I
> > should look elsewhere for motherboards.
>
> I'm running gentoo on exactly this setup. There was some trouble with
> support for the controller prior to 2.6.18, however it all works just
> fine if you use the "all-generic-ide irqpoll" boot parameters.

Doesn't the all-generic-ide line prevent you from using DMA and such?
The two objections I've seen to that is that it restricts the speed,
and also renames the drives to hd* instead of sd*, so things would get
switched around if I ever got to drop that parameter.

> Another issue you might run into is getting the onboard RTL8168
> ethernet controller working. There is no in-kernel driver for this
> thing. I managed to get the vendor-supplied driver compiling, but
> isn't working correctly for me (it seems to be transmitting packets
> fine but not receiving anything). I've not looked into it much since
> there seems to be in-kernel support coming soon and I've got another
> ethernet controller card to use in the meantime. There are also lots
> of reports from people getting it working successfully, so it may just
> be something stupid I'm doing.
> Cheers,
> Duane.

Yes, I'm seeing that, too.  I think at this point I'm looking into
other motherboards.

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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Duane Griffin]

On 30/09/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> Doesn't the all-generic-ide line prevent you from using DMA and such?
> The two objections I've seen to that is that it restricts the speed,
> and also renames the drives to hd* instead of sd*, so things would get
> switched around if I ever got to drop that parameter.

I'm not sure about DMA, actually. The DVD drive is the only thing
using it on my machine (the disks are SATA), so the performance and
device name isn't really a concern for me. It is all sorted out in
2.6.18, though, so if you upgrade to that immediately after getting
your base-installation done then you should be fine.

> > Another issue you might run into is getting the onboard RTL8168
> > ethernet controller working. There is no in-kernel driver for this
> > thing. I managed to get the vendor-supplied driver compiling, but
> > isn't working correctly for me (it seems to be transmitting packets
> > fine but not receiving anything). I've not looked into it much since
> > there seems to be in-kernel support coming soon and I've got another
> > ethernet controller card to use in the meantime. There are also lots
> > of reports from people getting it working successfully, so it may just
> > be something stupid I'm doing.
>
> Yes, I'm seeing that, too.  I think at this point I'm looking into
> other motherboards.

Maybe a good idea if you have the choice, but be careful. It seems a
lot of the i965 motherboards are using the JMicron, since the chipset
doesn't have a built-in IDE controller.

> Ryan W Sims

Cheers,
Duane.

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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

On 9/30/06, Duane Griffin <duaneg@dghda.com> wrote:
> On 29/09/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm looking at upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, and looking at the
> > Asus P5B series of motherboards.  I've found a couple forum posts
> > (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-494387-highlight-p965.html and
> > http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-498160-highlight-p965.html) that
> > seem to indicate troubles with JMicron support in kernels.  Is this
> > something I should be concerned about?  The forum discussions seem to
> > indicate that the problem is unresolved, indicating to me that I
> > should look elsewhere for motherboards.
>
> I'm running gentoo on exactly this setup. There was some trouble with
> support for the controller prior to 2.6.18, however it all works just
> fine if you use the "all-generic-ide irqpoll" boot parameters.

Did you pass those parameters to the amd64 installcd?  Or did you use
kernelOfTruth's livecd?

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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Duane Griffin]

On 30/09/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/30/06, Duane Griffin <duaneg@dghda.com> wrote:
> > I'm running gentoo on exactly this setup. There was some trouble with
> > support for the controller prior to 2.6.18, however it all works just
> > fine if you use the "all-generic-ide irqpoll" boot parameters.
>
> Did you pass those parameters to the amd64 installcd?  Or did you use
> kernelOfTruth's livecd?

I passed it to the 2006.1 install CD (and added it to my grub kernel
params, of course).

> > Another issue you might run into is getting the onboard RTL8168
> > ethernet controller working.
> People on the forums claim they're using the in-kernel Realtek 8169
> drivers, have you tried that?

Not yet, my understanding is that a patch is required to get it
working with 2.6.18. I have that compiled and ready to test, but I
haven't got around to rebooting and trying it. I'll get back to you
tomorrow :)

> Ryan W Sims

Cheers,
Duane.

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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Duane Griffin]

On 01/10/06, Duane Griffin <duaneg@dghda.com> wrote:
> On 30/09/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/30/06, Duane Griffin <duaneg@dghda.com> wrote:
> > > Another issue you might run into is getting the onboard RTL8168
> > > ethernet controller working.
> > People on the forums claim they're using the in-kernel Realtek 8169
> > drivers, have you tried that?
>
> Not yet, my understanding is that a patch is required to get it
> working with 2.6.18. I have that compiled and ready to test, but I
> haven't got around to rebooting and trying it. I'll get back to you
> tomorrow :)

Just FYI, 2.6.18 + r8169 patch works fine for the r8168 and JMicron.
Haven't tried the r8169 driver from plain vanilla 2.6.18, sorry.

Cheers,
Duane.

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Re: [gentoo-user] JMicron confusion

[Ryan Sims]

On 9/30/06, Duane Griffin <duaneg@dghda.com> wrote:
> On 29/09/06, Ryan Sims <rwsims@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm looking at upgrading to a Core 2 Duo system, and looking at the
> > Asus P5B series of motherboards.  I've found a couple forum posts
> > (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-494387-highlight-p965.html and
> > http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-498160-highlight-p965.html) that
> > seem to indicate troubles with JMicron support in kernels.  Is this
> > something I should be concerned about?  The forum discussions seem to
> > indicate that the problem is unresolved, indicating to me that I
> > should look elsewhere for motherboards.
>
> I'm running gentoo on exactly this setup. There was some trouble with
> support for the controller prior to 2.6.18, however it all works just
> fine if you use the "all-generic-ide irqpoll" boot parameters.
>
> Another issue you might run into is getting the onboard RTL8168
> ethernet controller working. There is no in-kernel driver for this
> thing. I managed to get the vendor-supplied driver compiling, but
> isn't working correctly for me (it seems to be transmitting packets
> fine but not receiving anything). I've not looked into it much since
> there seems to be in-kernel support coming soon and I've got another
> ethernet controller card to use in the meantime. There are also lots
> of reports from people getting it working successfully, so it may just
> be something stupid I'm doing.

People on the forums claim they're using the in-kernel Realtek 8169
drivers, have you tried that?

(sorry for all the noise, but the thought of upgrading my system and
the thought of not being able to intsall Gentoo fills my heart with
dread.  ;)

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