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Re: [LUG] Tip from the confused.

 

Simon Avery wrote:
> I built a new server for work this weekend. Nice athlon64-x2 4800. 80GB
> IDE, root, usr, var and home drive, 400gb sata for specific data.
>
> All fine. POSTs. Boot to CD of latest Debian testing netinst.
>
> Follow through the install, grab several main packages - leave it alone
> to download and install for several hours. Come back - it's finished,
> giving me the final "remove cd and reboot" prompt.
>
> Do so. Boot failure. Not even a grub prompt. So I figure the grub
> install has failed, or the partition isn't set active. I reboot to cd,
> fix that, verify boot flag with cfdisk - try again, same. Reinstall grub
> a few times - nothing. I try some old IDE drives to see if the
> mobo/controller is narfed. They work fine.
>
> Prize to anyone who knows what the problem was...
>
> On one of the boots, I noticed some error messages flash past before
> being hidden by the curses install screens. I flipped across the alt+f2
> and dmesg|more to see what they were. They were complaining of DMA
> failure on that device.
>
> Turns out, when building the machine, I'd re-used the ide cable that was
> in the case. It wasn't ATA/100 and the data was being corrupted as it
> was written. The install software was hiding, or not reporting, the
> errors so all appeared well. No write error occured during the install
> that was shown to me.
>
>   
Thats interesting.  Didn't it give you a warning message on the BIOS 
saying that it was using a 40 conductor IDE cable rather than an 80 
conductor cable?
> I replaced the cable with the new one that came with the mobo and the
> grub menu appeared - but then failed a boot due to the corruption.
> However, a second full reinstall worked fine. The other IDE drives
> worked since they were older.
>
> Something new to me, worth bearing in mind if building a new box.
>
>   
Will keep that in mind for future reference.
> By the way - for the curious, the X2 Athlons are great. These are AMD's
> dual-core beasts and yes, they work as spec. They do need a SMP kernel
> to make full use, debian at least doesn't assign one by default but
> there is a recent Athlon SMP kernel in the main package lists - just
> pick it with dselect and it will install automatically. Reboot and you
> have two processors. htop gives accurate usage per cpu. It just works!
> (This is using a 32-bit kernel mind, some software I run doesn't work
> too great in 64-bit mode) It runs cool (32-40c with the retail hs/fan)
> and if like the other athlons I use, will be rock solid.
>
> "Total of 2 processors activated (8853.98 BogoMIPS)."  Nice :
Oooh sounds nice.  I use a dual core Pentium D 820 at work (2 x 2.8GHz 
with 1MB cache on each core) but I would love an Athlon 64 X2.  I 
checked the prices of the entry level X2's the other day and it seems 
they're now getting within reach of the masses.  I think my next upgrade 
will be an X2 although I doubt it'll be a 4800+ (unless that is I win 
the lottery or get a pay rise ;-)

Rob

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