[9fans] Plan 9 on Intel P45 chipset motherboard

[9fans] Plan 9 on Intel P45 chipset motherboard

[Wolfgang Kunz]

Hi,

after reading a lot of chip sets I was thinking:

No risk, no fun

and bought a very new motherboard. The board is
an Asus P5Q SE2 with Intel P45 and ICH10.

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=T4T7B10FfR6zJ4Ns&templete=2

Here my results:

1. The installation of Plan 9 is not possible. I found
that the Marvell 88se61xx IDE controller is not working.
The message:
pcirouting: ignoring south bridge PCI.0.31.0 8086/3A18

could give more information. However: Installation with an
normal IDE cdrom is not possible. I will buy a SATA cdrom
and try it again.

2. The AHCI-driver works fine and Plan 9 runs like a storm.
I have the SATA drive attached to a Sil 3114 controller and
put both in an old PIII maschine. Booting and installation
of Plan 9 is slow but works fine. After that I connected the
drive back to the Asus board and changed the bios settings to
AHCI. Then I crossed the fingers and booted. It worked! I am
very happy! Now I have a very new fast motherboard with a
running Plan 9.

I use a nvidia 6200TC videocard. Here I have a problem with
the monitor setting. My Acer TTF need 1440 x 900. I changed
the plan9.ini to e198wfp as monitor and 1440x900x8 as vgasize.
Not a good idea. Now I can see anything.

Now my questions:

How can I stop starting rc and go to the console? Booting from
cdrom is not possible at the moment.

Any idea for the setting for my videocard/monitor?

Is it right that I can attach a SATA cdrom to the AHCI driver
and booting from cdrom works?

The ICH10 seems to works in AHCI mode. Are there some test that I
can make to verify this?

Regards,
Wolfgang

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Intel P45 chipset motherboard

[Steve Simon]

> How can I stop starting rc and go to the console? Booting from
> cdrom is not possible at the moment.

alternatively, if you have a network perhaps you could PXE boot the
machine from another host and then mount and edit plan9.ini

-Steve

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Intel P45 chipset motherboard

[erik quanstrom]

> 1. The installation of Plan 9 is not possible. I found
> that the Marvell 88se61xx IDE controller is not working.
> The message:
> pcirouting: ignoring south bridge PCI.0.31.0 8086/3A18

the pcirouting message is likely unrelated.

this is probablly a bug in the ahci driver.  the ahci driver should
reject the marvell 88se61xx part, as using ahci with this part
interferes with the pata ports working.  the contrib version of
this driver is more paranoid, and won't try vendors it doesn't
know.

the ide driver is supposedly capable of driving all the ports on
this part.

for reference, plan supports the  88sx[56]0[48][01] (sdmv50xx.c)
and 88se6485 (sdorion.c).

> How can I stop starting rc and go to the console? Booting from
> cdrom is not possible at the moment.
>

login as none.  if you're running a cpu kernel, then use
drawterm to login as the hostowner.

> Is it right that I can attach a SATA cdrom to the AHCI driver
> and booting from cdrom works?

yes.

> The ICH10 seems to works in AHCI mode. Are there some test that I
> can make to verify this?

cat /dev/sdctl.  this should tell you the ports that are in
ahci mode.  you can the find if drives are attached by
inspecting /dev/sdXZ/ctl for device letters listed in /dev/sdctl.
you can use dd on /dev/sdXZ/data to do i/o to the drive.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Intel P45 chipset motherboard

[Andreas Eriksen]

Hi Steve,

I also have an Asus P5Q motherboard (not "SE2") and an Asus EN6200LE/TC video card. I have been able to install from a sata dvd+rw drive in both IDE and AHCI mode, using the sata ports connected to the ICH10R. IDE compatability mode works with the official distribution, but without dma so it's quite slow. I was able to install in AHCI mode using erik quanstroms 9atom.iso, which was a lot faster.

I was able to get the right resolution for my screen by running 'aux/vga -m vesa -p > foo' in console mode, and adding part of the output as an entry in /lib/vgadb (it should look pretty similar to the existing entries, with only some slight changes required).

I don't think the on-board network adapter is supported (Atheros AR81xx), I use a gigabit intel nic. I haven't really looked at the onboard audio, I use an usb sound card.

I have had some problems using the box as a cpu server, as it would freeze up from time to time. It does however make a great terminal. Web browsing with opera 10.10 in linuxemu is fast and responsive, and I can play movies using ffmpeg (uses a lot of cpu). This really covers most of my needs and wants :)

Good luck,
Andreas

> Hi,
> 
> after reading a lot of chip sets I was thinking:
> 
> No risk, no fun
> 
> and bought a very new motherboard. The board is
> an Asus P5Q SE2 with Intel P45 and ICH10. 
> 
> http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=T4T7B10FfR6zJ4Ns&templete=2
> 
> Here my results:
> 
> 1. The installation of Plan 9 is not possible. I found
> that the Marvell 88se61xx IDE controller is not working.
> The message: 
> pcirouting: ignoring south bridge PCI.0.31.0 8086/3A18
> 
> could give more information. However: Installation with an
> normal IDE cdrom is not possible. I will buy a SATA cdrom
> and try it again.
> 
> 2. The AHCI-driver works fine and Plan 9 runs like a storm.
> I have the SATA drive attached to a Sil 3114 controller and
> put both in an old PIII maschine. Booting and installation
> of Plan 9 is slow but works fine. After that I connected the 
> drive back to the Asus board and changed the bios settings to 
> AHCI. Then I crossed the fingers and booted. It worked! I am 
> very happy! Now I have a very new fast motherboard with a 
> running Plan 9.
> 
> I use a nvidia 6200TC videocard. Here I have a problem with
> the monitor setting. My Acer TTF need 1440 x 900. I changed
> the plan9.ini to e198wfp as monitor and 1440x900x8 as vgasize.
> Not a good idea. Now I can see anything. 
> 
> Now my questions:
> 
> How can I stop starting rc and go to the console? Booting from
> cdrom is not possible at the moment.
> 
> Any idea for the setting for my videocard/monitor?
> 
> Is it right that I can attach a SATA cdrom to the AHCI driver
> and booting from cdrom works?
> 
> The ICH10 seems to works in AHCI mode. Are there some test that I 
> can make to verify this?
> 
> Regards,
> Wolfgang
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Intel P45 chipset motherboard

[erik quanstrom]

>I don't think the on-board network adapter is supported (Atheros
>AR81xx), I use a gigabit intel nic.  I haven't really looked at the
>onboard audio, I use an usb sound card.

unfortunately, not (yet) supported.

>I have had some problems using the box as a cpu server, as it would
>freeze up from time to time.  It does however make a great terminal.
>Web browsing with opera 10.10 in linuxemu is fast and responsive, and
>I can play movies using ffmpeg (uses a lot of cpu).  This really
>covers most of my needs and wants :)

bizarre.  is there any debugging information that you have?
can you still ping the box?  ^t^t^p on the console will display
what each process is doing. sometimes this is helpful.  if you're
using 9atom, you can connect with cec(8) in the absense of a
serial console.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on Intel P45 chipset motherboard

[Wolfgang Kunz]

>login as none.  if you're running a cpu kernel, then use
>drawterm to login as the hostowner.


Works fine. Many thanks!

>
>> Is it right that I can attach a SATA cdrom to the AHCI driver
>> and booting from cdrom works?
>
>yes.

I will order a SATA cdrom.


Regards,
Wolfgang