One unsuccessfull and two successfull sarge installs
With the arrival of some more hardware, I've tested debian-pure64 sarge
on the first two boards. Because these are for server use, audio is bios
disabled and X won't be installed. Both are Micro ATX motherboards with
on board VGA, accompanied by an Athlon64 2800+ CPU and 512MB Kingston
DDR400.
Asus K8S-MX, SiS 760GX/965L chipset, SiS 191 10/100 LAN
Problem free installation with DFS using an external RTL network card,
internal LAN not functional with latest SiS drivers from sis.com.tw or
linux 2.6.11. It seems both of these drivers don't recognize the 191
model LAN chip, and it seems the latest SiS drivers are still only
available for Windows. I'm putting this system on the shelf for a few
weeks, hoping that they'll release a driver then. As it's installed in a
Flex ATX case with half height PCI slots, using a common PCI network
card isn't an option.
MSI K8MM-ILSR, Via K8M800/VT8237 chipset, Via VT8237 10/100 LAN
Problem free installation with DFS using via-rhine module for LAN. This
must be an older model onboard NIC, as all other boards with on-board
Via LAN have used the newer via-velocity driver. I repeated the
installation on another identical system, just chose to use cdebootstrap
instead of debootstrap for the chroot. No problems there either.
Fortunately, I have a pile of MSI boards and only one problematic Asus
model. However, the design and ease of physical installation/maintenance
are far better on the Asus board. If the LAN driver issue is fixed, I'll
probably be purchasing more Asus boards of this model in the future. I'm
betting on this, as SiS generally seems to support Linux pretty well.
Application wise, I've tested some game server software (i386 binaries)
on pure64 Sarge. ia32-libs doesn't help much, but the HOWTO documention
on installing an ia32 chroot works perfectly, all I did was replace sid
with sarge. I can confirm the functionality of Call of Duty and Call of
Duty: United Offensive linux server binaries. In the "seems to work but
unverified" category I can mention Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Medal
of Honor: Spearhead and Half-Life 2. This means the linux servers run
without problems, but I haven't been able to test functionality with
client software.
Kyuu 'Vekotin' Eturautti
Reply to: