hardware

After I have been blogging about my server quite a bit, it is now finally the time to start all over.

After my new client is up and running, I had some spare parts, and as already mentioned, I decided to put all of them together into a brand-new server box. Here’s the new hardware list:

• Case: SilentMaxx ST-11 – still a robust tower with not much noise
• Power: Verax FSP300-60ATV 80PRO – silent power supply with 200W, suitable for P4 (note that the manufacturer’s website does not seem to exist properly any more – at least, I could not find any link to the product; I found this and this instead)
• CPU: Intel Pentium 4 with 2.5 GHz – this is a leftover from my old client
• Mainboard: Asus P4PE – again a leftover from my old client, a 478 mainboard with Intel 82845PE / ICH4 chipset. There is no product site to be found any more at the Asus website – but there are still some downloads
• RAM: Kingston KVR333X64V25/512 – 2x 512MB, Standard 64M X 64 Non-ECC 333MHz 184-pin Unbuffered DIMM (SDRAM-DDR, 2.5V, CL2.5, Gold)
• Harddisk Drives: Here comes the fun part, as I now have two HDD – first, a Samsung Spinpoint SP1203N with 120G, second a Seagate Barracuda 7200 (ST3160021A, again no proper manufacturer link, but using Google, I found this) with 160 GB – I will install LVM to get the best out of them.
• Graphic adaptor: an old Hercules 3D Prophet II; unfortunately, there is no adaptor embedded on the mainboard, so I had to use this one
• DVD-drive: Plextor PX-116A (no manufacturer website to be found any more
• DVD-R drive: LG GSA-4081B
• Network adapter: integrated on Mainboard, a Broadcomm (I have to find out which one it is)
• Printer: HP Deskjet 970Cxi
• Scanner: Canon CanoScan N670U with 600×1200dpi and USB interface (no manufacturer page any more)

Now, the parts are assembled into an old case and let’s boot….

In setup, I make sure that all IDE drives are properly detected; I disable the floppy drive, the second COM port, the parallel port, the gameport, the audio; then, I make sure that “Power up on PCI” is enabled for later power up on LAN.

Now, using a knoppix, I make sure everything is detected; the LAN is a broadcomm BCM4401, the Graphic adapter is detected as a Geforce 2 MX400, and the North- and the southbridge are there, too.

So, I start with wiping out the harddisk drives using cfdisk. Then, it is time to set up some new partition scheme! As I will have only a small /, containing some necessary stuff, I decided to have a partition scheme like this:
/dev/hda1 /    4GB
/dev/hda2 swap 512MB
/dev/hda3 LVM  the rest of hda
/dev/hdb1 LVM  the whole of hdb
I write these partition tables to the disk. That’s it for now; next is to start with a proper gentoo cd and activate LVM to create the volume groups. Then, it’s time to get Gentoo up and running!

I fixed an annoying behaviour in Firefox: When I scrolled fast with the scroll wheel on my mouse, Firefox would go back and forth (depending on the scroll direction) in my browser history.
I found some resource that described the solution: I had to change the ZAxisMapping in xorg.conf. I did as suggested – the problem is now gone!

Today, I made an attempt to get my sensors up and running.
There is a good post in the forums relating to the P5B-E.
Step by step, here’s what I did:
The sources for the patches did not work on my system; the original author of the post above provided his, and I have stored them here, here and here for convenience.
Then, I backuped my kernel (just copied the directory recursively) and patched it like this:
sudo patch -p1 -i ../jdelvare-hwmon-hwmon-w83627ehf-add-w83627dhg-support.patch
sudo patch -p1 -i ../hwmon-coretemp-new-driver.patch
sudo patch -p1 -i ../hwmon-coretemp-documentation.patch
After that, I entered kernel configuration with make menuconfig.
First, the eeprom option:
Device Drivers -->
I2C Support -->
Miscellaneous I2C Chip support -->
EEPROM Reader
(and added eeprom to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6)
Then under
Device Drivers -->
Hardware Monitoring Support -->
Intel Core 2 Duo/Solo temperature support
SMSC LPC47B397-NC
Winbond W83627EHF
In /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6, I made sure that these entries are present:
coretemp
w83627ehf
Then, I made the kernel and added sys-apps/lm_sensors to /etc/portage/package.keywords (with the ~x86 keyword, of course).
sensors-detect shows the sensors now; and sensors give an output! So everything is up and running; I now just have to adjust .conkyrc similar to the one in the post mentioned. Voila – the sensors are up and running!

OK – here we go; I booted the client with Knoppix. It came up, that’s the good news…
dmesg shows a lot of ACPI / APIC stuff – seems to work; also, the SATA drives are correctly initialised. USB is initialised as EHCI; firewire is initialised as ohci1394. The card readers are also initialised as scsi drives.
Here’s the output of lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation P965/G965 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation P965/G965 PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI Bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI Bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0295 (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Unknown device 1969:1048 (rev b0)
04:03.0 Firewire (IEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
The problem is the Attansic ethernet controller – it’s not detected. However, there is a driver, and as of kernel-2.6.20-r5, it should be in. Thanks good I won’t install Gentoo for some days…
A quick look with cat /proc/cpuinfo shows the following interesting flags:
fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
Everything seems to be ok.
Finally, I tried to use sound – it’s working with a headset plugged in in the front (but no speakers at the back) – so I know the sound is working and I just have to investigate where and how to plug in the speakers.
Alsamixer shows an “Analog Devices AD1988″ chip…
That’s it for the moment as a “tour d’horizon”; I know that the system will have some problems with Linux (especially the network driver), but I know too that it will work.

It’s done – I ordered the new system to be used as a client. I know, I know, I have been blogging about rebuilding my server, but the truth is, I can’t afford doing so at the moment due to the need of having printer, scanner and data in one place.
I decided to go with the client first, thus.

Now, here’s the system spec, with all necessary data and links to manufacturer’s sites:

• Intel Core2Duo E6600, 2.4 GHz, 4MB, 1066MHZ FSB (with Intel boxed fan); Link
• Mainboard: ASUS P5B-E; Intel P965 / ICH8R, Intel Matrix Storage Technology (RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10), JMicron® JMB363, Attansic L1 PCI-E Gigabit LAN controller, VIA VT6307 1394a controller; Link
• RAM:Corsair 2GB DDR2-667 (2x 1GB)
• Video-card: Asus GeForce 7950GT 512MB DDR3 (1.4GHz), 24 Pixel Pipelines, DirectX 9.0
  Link
• HDD: Samsung HD401LJ, T133S, 7200rpm, 16MB, 400GB, SATA-II
  Link
• DVD-Combo Drive: Samsung WriteMaster SH-S183L, SATA
  Link
• Chassis: Coolermaster Centurion 5
  Link
• Thermaltake Toughpower 600W
  Link

The system is due to arrive within the next days – and with easter ahead, I am sure that I will have some time to start building it; there will be a Windows XP (yes, XP, no Vista – not mature enough…) to install first, and once this is done, a Gentoo Linux again. But first, I have to think about the partition scheme…