Closure: Vetting motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H for FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE
Frank Shute-2 wrote: I've had good luck with anything by Asus and Gigabyte. I tend to avoid boards with bleeding edge hardware/features as these will not have received so much testing (and may not even be supported) on FreeBSD. This in practice means get a board that's been on sale for a bit. In my research and unwitting trials with this particular motherboard (Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H), I found that, while it is generally well tolerated by FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE, the onboard RAID is completely incompatible. Even when a RocketRAID 3120 card was used, the RAID could be built, but the ar0 device thus created, did not survive a reboot. Also, a software RAID was attempted -- after a minimal install from CD, the atacontrol command was used to create RAID ar0, then (without rebooting) exiting back to the installer, the OS was loaded onto it; however, upon reboot, ar0 could not be found. In other words, it could not boot from any RAID, whether by software in FreeBSD or by hardware on RocketRAID. The problem stems from the board's Southbridge SB700 chipset (the infamous 700 series). This chipset is not (yet?) supported in FreeBSD. Other notes on this board include the following: -Generic VGA worked. -The onboard LAN (chipset 8111C) worked in 7.1-RELEASE, but not 7.0. -If the SATA ports are put into AHCI or Native IDE modes, individual disks were recognized, but in RAID mode, neither the RAID nor individual disks could be seen. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Vetting-motherboard-Gigabyte-GA-MA78G-DS3H-for-FreeBSD-7.0-RELEASE-tp21100783p21591458.html Sent from the freebsd-questions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Vetting motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H for FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 09:15:33AM -0800, ThinkDifferently wrote: I'm currently looking for an ATX motherboard that supports the AM2+ socket, Phenom Quad-Core processor, 4 DDR2 RAM slots (800 MHz is fine), 6 SATA ports with RAID, and Gigabit LAN. Onboard VGA would be nice. It needs to work well with FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE, using a 2-disk SATA RAID1. I'm currently looking at the Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H. Has anyone successfully operated 7.0 on this board? Any booting issues? Did you need to modify the ISO to get it to boot (if so how)? Did RAID work? Did it require a special driver to be loaded (if so how)? Do any other motherboards fit the bill, given the specifications I give above? I recently got a black eye -( with the MSI K9N2G Neo-FD, using the GeForce 8200 (MCP78) chipset. FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE and CentOS 5.2 wouldn't even boot on it, no matter what the BIOS config was. Also, Vista wouldn't even recognize the SATA disks, even if the SATA ports were in IDE, RAID or AHCI modes (it requires a driver, even if you aren't doing RAID). -- I haven't used that MB but I am using a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L (core2) so I'll offer some general advice since no one else seems to want to! ;) I've had good luck with anything by Asus and Gigabyte. I tend to avoid boards with bleeding edge hardware/features as these will not have received so much testing (and may not even be supported) on FreeBSD. This in practice means get a board that's been on sale for a bit. None of my machines are configured for RAID but as a general point, most on this list use software RAID in the form of geom/geli/gmirror etc. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom.html The consensus seems to be that it's just as good as hardware raid performance-wise. There was a thread on this list about it a few months ago. I'd use FreeBSD 7.1-RC1 if I was building a FreeBSD machine today for production purposes as it will be more uptodate with respect drivers for newer hardware and most bugs will have been shaken out this close to release. My compatibilty check for hardware usually consists of going to Google and punching in FreeBSD and the name of the hardware. This usually brings up hits which indicate the level of support. HTH. Regards, -- Frank Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Vetting motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H for FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE
I'm currently looking for an ATX motherboard that supports the AM2+ socket, Phenom Quad-Core processor, 4 DDR2 RAM slots (800 MHz is fine), 6 SATA ports with RAID, and Gigabit LAN. Onboard VGA would be nice. It needs to work well with FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE, using a 2-disk SATA RAID1. I'm currently looking at the Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H. Has anyone successfully operated 7.0 on this board? Any booting issues? Did you need to modify the ISO to get it to boot (if so how)? Did RAID work? Did it require a special driver to be loaded (if so how)? Do any other motherboards fit the bill, given the specifications I give above? I recently got a black eye -( with the MSI K9N2G Neo-FD, using the GeForce 8200 (MCP78) chipset. FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE and CentOS 5.2 wouldn't even boot on it, no matter what the BIOS config was. Also, Vista wouldn't even recognize the SATA disks, even if the SATA ports were in IDE, RAID or AHCI modes (it requires a driver, even if you aren't doing RAID). -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Vetting-motherboard-Gigabyte-GA-MA78G-DS3H-for-FreeBSD-7.0-RELEASE-tp21077043p21077043.html Sent from the freebsd-questions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Vetting motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H for FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE
ThinkDifferently wrote: I'm currently looking for an ATX motherboard... Sorry, I forgot to mention that I do not need HTPC quality video and sound from this thing. I know the mobo I mentioned has HTPC written all over it, but it's the base qualities (processor, chipset, SATA, etc.) that really count. All I need is basic VGA, and some stereo sound wouldn't be too bad. I don't really care if accelerated video or theater-quality sound output was bad or flaky. I'm going to operate it as a server and plug it into a VGA KVM that has a max resolution of 1024x768. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Vetting-motherboard-Gigabyte-GA-MA78G-DS3H-for-FreeBSD-7.0-RELEASE-tp21077043p21077407.html Sent from the freebsd-questions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
