Is there an issue with nForce 1 and Linux?

[Son Goku]

I've got a nForce 1 chipset (Asus A7N266-E) and ever since building this box I have never gotten Linux to sucessfully operate. Mandrake 7.2 didn't have the drivers, so OK no problem. I then tried Mandrake 8.1, 8.2, 9.0 and recently tried loading a recent version of Knoppix (the recent security tools distro which I got from the networking lab) to see if this would load, all a dismal failure.

People seem to get Linux loaded fine with nForce 2 chipsets however. Has anyone gotten Linux to load sucessfully on a nForce 420-D chipset before, and if so what distro and what had you done? In Mandrake I got the black screen of death, and never so much as a login prompt. With Knoppix, it got to configuring itself (the opening GUI screen) and then all activity just died.

[MNKyDeth]

I have the same mobo in one of my other comps. I have never had any real problems installing any sort of linux on it. I have only tried two distro's on it though.

Red Hat 9 when I was new to linux and I now use Arch linux on it. The NIC is the hardest thing to setup on an Nforce mobo. But, if you know how to compile a kernel 2.6.3 and later have everything you need in it for the nforce style mobo's.

[Son Goku]

hmm... I should be able to get ahold of Redhat 9 from the networking lab. We've been taking it from the NFS server there, but there are a few CDs which could be copied. I should be able to d/l the kernel from Windows if it goes and store it to the first partition which is FAT. THX

[lionSOB]

Son Goku
I am running Knoppix/Debian Linux Ver.3.3 2004-2-16 on a NForce 1 mobo (MSI K7N420D Pro).I am a new Linux user so I can't help you with other distros but Knoppix Ver. 3.3 will bootup and run from the CD-ROM if you use the { knoppix noscsi } cheatcode at the boot prompt.

VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER!!!
You may have problems with your onboard ethernet controller,not under Linux but when you reboot back into Windows 9x the network adapter's driver won't load!(If anyone knows how to fix this problem I would be very thankfull for the help!)

I liked what I saw the first time I ran Knoppix/Debian well enough that I went ahead and installed it on my hard drive and now run it most of the time ( that and the fact that the only way I can access the internet now is under Linux, see disclaimer above ).

Hope This Helps.
Peace
lionSob

[Son Goku]

THX, but no SCSI wouldn't work in my case. All of my drives, from CD burner, to DVD ROM, to hard drives are all attached to an Adaptec 29160 Ultra3 SCSI card. The Knoppix version I tried was the lattest STD (security tools distribution) which was recently taken from there site. Well, what other version would I get from the networking lab, when we're learning about things like network security and all No, I won't load etercat and whatnot on my home PC. Tis do not want to make my ISP nervious...

I tried Red Hat 9.0 and it wouldn't install the boot loader, a prob that

- Mandrake 9 didn't have
- that earlier versions of Red Hat (like 7.2) didn't have on this drive though that was on a prior mobo when I had an Athlon tbird 1 GHz CPU.

[Megatron1983]

Sounds like we have common problems there.
I have a MSI K7N 420 Pro Mainboard and run it on SuSE 9.1 pro.
All works well, Networking etc. except the Audio, I dont have any Audio at all.
Does anyone know how to configure that thing under SuSE 9.1?

Additional to that, I have the same network problem as lionSOB does, once i exit Linux and reboot into Windows XP, i need to reboot one more time to be able to use my onboard Network card again.
Dont know how and why this happens.

[MrJon]

I have the same problem with my nForce 420, installation of SuSE Linux 9.1 resulted in the nVidia network adapter no longer working in Windows XP (although it worked fine when WinXP/Suse 8.0 were dual booting).

The only way I could find to get the network adapter working under windows again was to remove CMOS battery, set jumper to reset, remove power cord and hold down power on button for a few seconds. This would make the adapter work in windows, but with a blank mac address (00-00-00-00-00-00).
When booting into linux, the card would not work until removed and reinstalled with Yast, where it would get a different mac address, and upon intallation would cease to work with windows xp again.

Fantastic. ?

[Kamel]

though scsi is necessary, could you try knoppix without scsi? the beauty of knoppix is that it will run from a cd, so drives aren't needed. if you did this, you could atleast find out if the raid controller is what is messing you up, or if it is the motherboard itself, etc.

if this doesn't work, i would strongly reccomend using the regular knoppix distribution as opposed to knoppix STD. there's nothing wrong with STD, but plain knoppix usually has better support -- though it is rather rare, sometimes the knoppix distro will have support for something that knoppix std will not.

you also mentioned that mandrake got a black screen of death... when did this happen? did you have the gui open; did it even open? orr.. can you not even get a console to type in?

as a final suggestion, even if you do not get gentoo, the gentoo live cd has some of the best hardware support there is. if you could download the latest gentoo live cd, maybe that will work, go from there and you may be able to find the problem. here's the folder for the livecd:

http://gentoo.ccccom.com/releases/x86/2004.1/livecd/

would suggest getting universial as it has more utils that come with it for operating, but if download size matters minimal is small enough.

good luck, LMK

[Son Goku]

The CD drive is needed. All of my CD drives are SCSI too. BTW, it's a SCSI card, but not a RAID controller, the 2 drives aren't stripped or anything, and the card has no hardware based RAID support. Also, I've had this SCSI card, and all these same drives since December 2000. I got this motherboard, CPU, and RAM in February 2002. From December 200 till February 2002, Linux both loaded and run on my computer quite happily, in both Red Hat and Mandrake. I think it's safe to assume the SCSI card is not the culprit...

Mandrake got the black screen of death immediately, with nothing having ever displayed to video. Just a little disk activity, and that was it. Nothing ever displayed after the Lilo screen...

THX though for the suggestion. Someone suggested trying Mandrake 10.0 or Fedora Core 2. I'll need to check them, when I can get down to burning CDs. Gento is another distro I could try. Should know more then. THX for the info.

[Kamel]

Originally Posted by Son Goku

The CD drive is needed. All of my CD drives are SCSI too. BTW, it's a SCSI card, but not a RAID controller, the 2 drives aren't stripped or anything, and the card has no hardware based RAID support. Also, I've had this SCSI card, and all these same drives since December 2000. I got this motherboard, CPU, and RAM in February 2002. From December 200 till February 2002, Linux both loaded and run on my computer quite happily, in both Red Hat and Mandrake. I think it's safe to assume the SCSI card is not the culprit...

Mandrake got the black screen of death immediately, with nothing having ever displayed to video. Just a little disk activity, and that was it. Nothing ever displayed after the Lilo screen...

THX though for the suggestion. Someone suggested trying Mandrake 10.0 or Fedora Core 2. I'll need to check them, when I can get down to burning CDs. Gento is another distro I could try. Should know more then. THX for the info.

right, didn't think about the cdrom being scsi, lol. try out the live cd and see what happens, a lot of people claim it is the only livecd that will run on their systems, so maybe that's indicates something with your situation, lol.

[backslash]

HELP!

I've got similar problems only its the other way around.

I'm a linux newbie. 2 hour old newbie in fact.

My onboard ethernet controller isnt recognised when i boot from knoppix v3.33-2003-11-19.

when I type 'lspci' in the shell thingy it recognises i've got a 'nvidia nforce MCP network controller' however when I go the thing to initialise my network controller it says no valid ethernet device was found.

When I boot normally to winXP it works fine.

if i do have to download a driver, how will I know which is the right one?

Can anyone help?

thanx in advance