Hello.

I've got a new Dell 8400 (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB, 1
GB 400 MHz SDRAM, 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM drive, 128 MB PCI Express x16 ATI
Radeon X300 SE video, Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Advanced HD Audio, 100
dB/Dolby, and, alas, XP professional) on the way. Assuming that Dell
formats the drive as 160 GB XP partition, I went out and bought Norton's
Partition Magic with the intent of squishing XP down to 10 GB or so and
use the 150 GB remainder for Slackware 10 (as an aside, Partition Magic
came with a $20 rebate in the box, plus a $30 rebate, plus a $40 rebate
-- that means somebody's paying me $20 for the software -- what is the
world coming to). I've learned that if I want to run TurboTax (what else
would anybody want winders for, one asks?), I gotta have *$(*#&$#
windows, so I'm going to keep XP, dual boot the thing, and just use it
once a year, so there you are. I'm going to plug in to my existing
network router and use my existing H-P InkJet and Samsung 19" monitor
and speakers and whatever else might be laying around that's useful.

My question would be, can I expect any Slackware configuration problems
with this baby? I'm pretty sure that the ATI board will be all right and
that the Sound Blaster will, too. I'm told that the built-in Intel Pro
1000 integrated PCI NIC card should not be a problem and that the CD-RW
drive should be do its thing as well (we'll see about that one) -- I
already know about SCSI emulation with my current box. Anything I've got
to watch out for? I've already got my Linux partition sizes figured out
and I'm going to do a full install and then edit the stuff I need to to
get back in business (and I'm hoping that won't take more than a couple
of hours, but you never know).

Advice? Criticism? Anything?

Thanks.

Thomas Ronayne wrote:

> Hello.
>
> I've got a new Dell 8400 (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB, 1
> GB 400 MHz SDRAM, 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM drive, 128 MB PCI Express x16 ATI
> Radeon X300 SE video, Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Advanced HD Audio, 100
> dB/Dolby, and, alas, XP professional) on the way. Assuming that Dell
> formats the drive as 160 GB XP partition, I went out and bought Norton's
> Partition Magic with the intent of squishing XP down to 10 GB or so and
> use the 150 GB remainder for Slackware 10 (as an aside, Partition Magic
> came with a $20 rebate in the box, plus a $30 rebate, plus a $40 rebate
> -- that means somebody's paying me $20 for the software -- what is the
> world coming to). I've learned that if I want to run TurboTax (what else
> would anybody want winders for, one asks?), I gotta have *$(*#&$#
> windows, so I'm going to keep XP, dual boot the thing, and just use it
> once a year, so there you are. I'm going to plug in to my existing
> network router and use my existing H-P InkJet and Samsung 19" monitor
> and speakers and whatever else might be laying around that's useful.
>
> My question would be, can I expect any Slackware configuration problems
> with this baby?

Nothing is perfect out of the box, so you might have to configure some
stuff, especially Xorg (for your video card and monitor -- keep monitor
manual so you can get vsync/hsync specs for xorgconfig).

> I'm pretty sure that the ATI board will be all right and
> that the Sound Blaster will, too. I'm told that the built-in Intel Pro
> 1000 integrated PCI NIC card

Now I'm jealous :P

> should not be a problem and that the CD-RW
> drive should be do its thing as well (we'll see about that one) -- I
> already know about SCSI emulation with my current box. Anything I've got
> to watch out for? I've already got my Linux partition sizes figured out
> and I'm going to do a full install and then edit the stuff I need to to
> get back in business (and I'm hoping that won't take more than a couple
> of hours, but you never know).
>
> Advice? Criticism? Anything?
>
> Thanks.

--
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
-- E. W. Dijkstra

Thomas Ronayne wrote:

> I've got a new Dell 8400 (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB, 1
> GB 400 MHz SDRAM, 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM drive, 128 MB PCI Express x16 ATI
> Radeon X300 SE video, Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Advanced HD Audio, 100
> dB/Dolby, and, alas, XP professional) on the way.

Nice. That should be a very fast system (until next year that is).

> My question would be, can I expect any Slackware configuration problems
> with this baby?

You need to confirm that whatever kernel you use supports SATA drives.
This support is typically provided in the libata driver, which is
standard on 2.6 kernels and newer 2.4 kernels. Not sure if slackware 10
includes this driver by default.

In order to even install Linux, you'll need a boot cd that supports SATA.

Cheers,
Ed

NeoSadist wrote:

>
>
>Nothing is perfect out of the box, so you might have to configure some
>stuff, especially Xorg (for your video card and monitor -- keep monitor
>manual so you can get vsync/hsync specs for xorgconfig).
>
>
Yep, got all that, but the monitor configured just about right with
xorgconfig in Slack 10 on the current box, so...

>
>
>Now I'm jealous :P
>
>
Don't be too -- I only do this once every five years or so and figure go
big or don't bother (and, of course, it'll be obsolete next Wednesday).
It'll be interesting to see how NetBeans and other Java-related stuff
performs, though.

Thanks for the comments.

Thomas

--
In what is probably a vain attempt to get off SPAM lists, you'll have to delete the nonsense in my address if you want to reply; sorry about that, but enough is enough!

Edward Buck wrote:

>
> Nice. That should be a very fast system (until next year that is).

Yeah, it'll be here Monday or Tuesday and I figure it'll be obsolete by
Wednesday.

>
>
> You need to confirm that whatever kernel you use supports SATA drives.
> This support is typically provided in the libata driver, which is
> standard on 2.6 kernels and newer 2.4 kernels. Not sure if slackware
> 10 includes this driver by default.
>
> In order to even install Linux, you'll need a boot cd that supports SATA.

Ouch! Well, it's always sumpin: we'll see.

>
> Cheers,
> Ed

And to you, too.

Thomas

--
In what is probably a vain attempt to get off SPAM lists, you'll have to delete the nonsense in my address if you want to reply; sorry about that, but enough is enough!

Thomas Ronayne wrote:

> My question would be, can I expect any Slackware configuration problems
> with this baby?

You may have trouble finding a driver for your video card that will provide
full 3D hardware acceleration. You will have no problem at all getting
excellent 2D, and software generated 3D (which I think would be fine on
that system, unless you play games.) Newer Radeon chipsets are in need of
some attention from driver writers, last I heard.

Somebody mentioned the SATA drive. Kernel 2.4.27 has SATA support, and
Slackware-current at least provides a kernel called "sata.i" that should
work for you.

Jeffrey

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In alt.os.linux.slackware, Thomas Ronayne dared to utter,
> Ouch! Well, it's always sumpin: we'll see.

Couple months back there was a lot of talk about installing Slackware
10.0 on SATA drives. IIRC I made a very in depth post on the subject.
Search groups.google.com for further pointers.

- --
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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Thomas Ronayne <trona@removethisameritech.net> wrote:
> Hello.

> I've got a new Dell 8400 (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB, 1
> GB 400 MHz SDRAM, 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM drive, 128 MB PCI Express x16 ATI
> Radeon X300 SE video, Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Advanced HD Audio, 100
> dB/Dolby, and, alas, XP professional) on the way. Assuming that Dell
<snip>

We got a bunch of very similar Dell machines in at the labs recently,
except ours had NVidia graphics cards. The biggest issue is that the
default kernel on the Slackware 10 install disk does not support the SATA
chipset (at least on the machines we got). Either you have to apply a
patch to the 2.4.x line or use the 2.6.x line to even install Slackware on
it (since Dell criples its BIOS so you can't use the "enable legacy mode"
trick to get around SATA issues at install).

What I did was compile the 2.6.7 kernel that's on the Slackware 10.0 CDs
on one of my home machines with all required support (SATA, network, etc)
compiled as included, not as modules. I then built my own boot CD by
taking the isolinux/ and kernels/ directories off the Slackware 10.0
install disk. I placed my compiled kernel in the kernels/ directory as
sata.i, modified isolinux/isolinux.cfg to contain the sata.i kernel and
added a reference to that kernel in isolinux/f3.txt. I made those two
directories into an iso and burned a new bootable CD (see the readme file
in isolinux directory for instructions on how to make the iso). I then
used that CD to boot and switched it for the regular Slackware 10.0
install CD once I was in setup. I also made sure to install the 2.6.7
kernel, source and modules after I was done with the setup process by
switching to the second CD and using installpkg before rebooting. The only
other issue I had was with the NVidia graphics card (had to use NVidia's
drivers, the xorg ones didn't work), but since your system has an ATI
card, that doesn't matter.

Another guy in the labs took a slightly different path. He applied a SATA
patch against the 2.4.26 kernel, compiled it with the bare.i kernel
config, replaced the bare.i kernel with his new kernel and created his iso
with the entire install CD contents (so you didn't have to switch disks
once in setup). So there's more than one way around the SATA install
issue.

Cichlidiot wrote:

><snip>
>
>What I did was compile the 2.6.7 kernel that's on the Slackware 10.0 CDs
>on one of my home machines with all required support (SATA, network, etc)
>compiled as included, not as modules. I then built my own boot CD by
>taking the isolinux/ and kernels/ directories off the Slackware 10.0
>install disk. I placed my compiled kernel in the kernels/ directory as
>sata.i, modified isolinux/isolinux.cfg to contain the sata.i kernel and
>added a reference to that kernel in isolinux/f3.txt. I made those two
>directories into an iso and burned a new bootable CD (see the readme file
>in isolinux directory for instructions on how to make the iso). I then
>used that CD to boot and switched it for the regular Slackware 10.0
>install CD once I was in setup. I also made sure to install the 2.6.7
>kernel, source and modules after I was done with the setup process by
>switching to the second CD and using installpkg before rebooting. The only
>other issue I had was with the NVidia graphics card (had to use NVidia's
>drivers, the xorg ones didn't work), but since your system has an ATI
>card, that doesn't matter.
>
>Another guy in the labs took a slightly different path. He applied a SATA
>patch against the 2.4.26 kernel, compiled it with the bare.i kernel
>config, replaced the bare.i kernel with his new kernel and created his iso
>with the entire install CD contents (so you didn't have to switch disks
>once in setup). So there's more than one way around the SATA install
>issue.
>
>
Good lord.

Well, nobody ever said it had to be easy all the time -- thanks for the
pointers.

Thomas

I wonder if you might be kind enough to tell me what you turned on (if
you have Intel 82801 controllers) and did you have to turn anything off?

I tried the sata.i from Slackware current, but it doesn't look like it's
the right thing.

Thanks.

Cichlidiot wrote:

>Thomas Ronayne <trona@removethisameritech.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Hello.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>I've got a new Dell 8400 (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB, 1
>>GB 400 MHz SDRAM, 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM drive, 128 MB PCI Express x16 ATI
>>Radeon X300 SE video, Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Advanced HD Audio, 100
>>dB/Dolby, and, alas, XP professional) on the way. Assuming that Dell
>>
>>
><snip>
>
>We got a bunch of very similar Dell machines in at the labs recently,
>except ours had NVidia graphics cards. The biggest issue is that the
>default kernel on the Slackware 10 install disk does not support the SATA
>chipset (at least on the machines we got). Either you have to apply a
>patch to the 2.4.x line or use the 2.6.x line to even install Slackware on
>it (since Dell criples its BIOS so you can't use the "enable legacy mode"
>trick to get around SATA issues at install).
>
>What I did was compile the 2.6.7 kernel that's on the Slackware 10.0 CDs
>on one of my home machines with all required support (SATA, network, etc)
>compiled as included, not as modules. I then built my own boot CD by
>taking the isolinux/ and kernels/ directories off the Slackware 10.0
>install disk. I placed my compiled kernel in the kernels/ directory as
>sata.i, modified isolinux/isolinux.cfg to contain the sata.i kernel and
>added a reference to that kernel in isolinux/f3.txt. I made those two
>directories into an iso and burned a new bootable CD (see the readme file
>in isolinux directory for instructions on how to make the iso). I then
>used that CD to boot and switched it for the regular Slackware 10.0
>install CD once I was in setup. I also made sure to install the 2.6.7
>kernel, source and modules after I was done with the setup process by
>switching to the second CD and using installpkg before rebooting. The only
>other issue I had was with the NVidia graphics card (had to use NVidia's
>drivers, the xorg ones didn't work), but since your system has an ATI
>card, that doesn't matter.
>
>Another guy in the labs took a slightly different path. He applied a SATA
>patch against the 2.4.26 kernel, compiled it with the bare.i kernel
>config, replaced the bare.i kernel with his new kernel and created his iso
>with the entire install CD contents (so you didn't have to switch disks
>once in setup). So there's more than one way around the SATA install
>issue.
>
>