Installing SuSE Linux 9.2 + kernel 2.6.11 on a Dell Dimension 8400 with SATA disks

I installed SuSE Linux 9.2 + kernel 2.6.11 on a Dell Dimension 8400 with SATA disks. It worked.

I installed Suse 9.2, but likely that one can do the same with debian, knoppix, redhat or fedora.

This is all based on notes that I took from:
www.homerengineeringcorp.net/mythtv/myth.html

Please note that these are my personal experiences cq. notes, and that it worked for me on my computer. My notes are similar, to what can be read in /usr/src/linux/README in SuSe Linux. In case of doubt, follow SuSe's notes rather than mine. You can only blame yourself, not me, if something goes wrong, if you try this on your own computer. I do not take any liability or responsability for any damage caused by repeating my excercise. If you don't agree, you should stop here.

Please note also that at the last Cebit 2005 in Germany, a new Suse 9.3 and a new Knoppix 3.8 (both with kernel 2.6.11) were announced, which will probably make this excercise obsolete.


This is what I did:

My system is a Dell Dimension 8400, 2x SATA WD160GB, ATI X300, no soundcard.
There is on both disks a bootable Windows XP: partition 1 is Dell Utilities Fat16, partition 2 is NTFS.
The system was made dual XP boot with boot.ini, but both disks can also be used independendly.

Tools used:
- Kanotix 1-2005 Live CD (Knoppix clone; www.kanotix.org) for testing; Knoppix_V3.8 (search via "google" ; german !) will recognize Autoraid/AHCI as well.
- Partitioning tool, such as Partition Magic 7 (for resizing and formatting partitions); maybe the SuSe 9.2 install disk can do the partitioning too.
- Suse Linux Professional 9.2, kernel 2.6.8-24.

I made backup's first of Windows XP, and found out how one can restore Windows XP, before starting to partition disks and installing linux.
For a Dell 8400 one needs:
- the Operating System Restore CD (can be Windows XP Home or Pro)
- Windows XP license key, on a sticker on the side of your Dell.
- a floppy with the Windows XP SATA drivers, that System Restore needs to find your disks (DELL download R78496.exe contains the SATA drivers).
- Generally one can repair the master boot record, when damaged, with the System Restore CD
- Do not panic, often Windows can self repair. And it is handy to have a second computer on-line for finding answers on your questions.

And once in linux, I made copies of all files that I edited first, before I modified, overwrote or removed them, by accident.
Step 0 is a test , steps 1-2 describe the SuSe installation, step 3 the AHCI/SATA kernel-ugrade, steps 4 & up Grub, Mplayer, DVD/CD setup and the Ati 3D card.

Step 0 - Boot from Kanotix 1-2005 Live CD.
The 2 SATA disks were recognized (sda1, sda2, sdb1, sdb2) and mounted (with Dell Bios at "Autoraid/AHCI"). Conclusion is that a dual bootable XP/linux system must be possible. First we need some space on disk2.

Step 1 - Partition disk.
Boot into C:Windows XP.
Since the NTFS filesystem on F: appeared damaged, I first repaired it:
chkdsk /f f:
With Partition Magic the NTFS (2nd) partition on disk2 was resized, and an empty unformatted patition of 20 GB was made at the end of disk2.

Step 2 - Install Operating System Suse 9.2
Then Dell Dimension 8400 was booted into Bios (key F2 at boot) and temporarily the drives were set to Autoraid/ATA.
From the Suse Pro 9.2 DVD an install was done to disk2. Most hardware was recognized, but the monitor was set to Vesa, and there was no 3D for the ATI X300 card. Internet (via DHCP and DSL), sound worked. With Yast, various developer tools (compilers) and a lot of Qt3 (needed for 'xconfig') were installed.
I also compiled xxdiff from xxdiff.sourceforge.org, for comparing 'edited' files with copies of the original files.

Till this point one needs to switch the Bios drive settings to "Autoraid/AHCI" when one wants to reboot into Windows XP, and to switch to "Autoraid/ATA" for Linux.

Step 3 - Install the 2.6.11 kernel.
This kernel was reported to have full SATA/AHCI support.
I got the kernel source at www.kernel.org (35 MB as .bz2) and put it into a local directory, e.g. ~/temp.

As a normal user I did:
$ tar xfvj linux-2.6.11.tar.bz2
A directory ~/temp/linux-2.6.11 [dir] is made. Later we will create the new kernel in [dir].

I changed directory to the source [dir]
$ cd ~/temp/linux-2.6.11
Issued the command to clear the source directory and got rid of previous configs
$ make mrproper

Get the current kernel (2.6.8-24) configuration (.config), and put the output files in another directory [dir2]:
$ cd /usr/src/linux
$ make cloneconfig O=[dir2] ( or make oldconfig O=[dir2] )

Return to the source [dir] and copy the created .config file in your working directory
$ cd ~/temp/linux-2.6.11
$ cp [dir2]/.config .

There are various ways to update the current .config file, but I will use xconfig:
$ make xconfig
I did not change a thing, and saved the file.
Note:
- "make cloneconfig" gave a working .config file for me
- "make oldconfig" worked as well.
- 'make xconfig' hints the meaning of the kernel parameters

The SATA part in the new .config is
....
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA=y
# CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_AHCI is not set
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SVW=m
CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX=m
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_NV=m
....

From here, I issued the following commands -
$ make clean
$ make bzImage
$ make modules

Simply put, make clean gets rid of any remaining junk left during in the config,
while make bzImage creates the boot image for the new kernel.
Make modules makes the kernel modules. The last two steps take some time.

The next step needs to be executed as root (be careful !) to install the modules. Run -
$ su
# make modules_install

The make modules_install places all of the new kernel modules in /lib/modules/2.6.11/.
First off, let's move the bzImage to the /boot folder, so there's a 2.6.11 kernel to boot.
As root (be careful), run-
# cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinux-2.6.11
# cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.11
# ln -s /boot/System.map-2.6.11 /boot/System.map

The three commands, in order, move the boot image to a file in the /boot folder and uses the SuSE-naming convention for the boot image. The System.map file is copied and then linked to the System.map.
We need to make an initial ramdisk to provide drivers for the computer to access the filesystem.
From here, run (as root) the mkinitrd utility:
# mkinitrd -k vmlinux-2.6.11 -i initrd-2.6.11

Our final step is to link the the bootloader with the new 2.6.11 kernel.
By default, Grub is the bootloader for SuSE, so these instructions apply to Grub.
Edit the file at /boot/grub/menu.lst
# cd /boot/grub/
# pico menu.lst

Add the following lines to the file -

### Kernel 2.6.11 boot instructions ###
title SuSE Linux 9.2 - 2.6.11
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinux-2.6.11 vga=normal
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd-2.6.11

I made similar flags as with your orginal Suse 9.2, and a failsafe option as well.
For the kernel instructions, set "vga" for 2.6.11 in menu.lst as "vga=normal", the rest can be as for Suse 9.2 in the menu.lst.

The installation of the 2.6.11 kernel on disk2 (hd1,1) is complete.
You can boot into kernel 2.6.11 both with "Autoraid/ATA" and with "Autoraid/AHCI".
The last clearly makes an easy dual boot with Windows possible, without changing the BIOS settings.

I have still the original Dell Windows XP installation on disk 1.

Step 4 Restyling the bootloader
Instructions for GRUB can be found in linux, run -
$ info grub

Since all is working fine, I removed the second boot entry in boot.ini in Windows XP, and made a 'Windows XP 2nd disk' and 'Dell Utility' entry in menu.lst:

gfxmenu (hd1,4)/message
color white/green black/light-gray
default=0
timeout=10

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

title Windows 2nd disk
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
chainloader +1

title Dell Uitility
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title floppy
root (fd0)
chainloader +1

title SuSE Linux 9.2 - 2.6.11
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinux-2.6.11 vga=normal
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd-2.6.11

....

As you can easily guess,
- the first two lines cover the configuration of the splash menu: the background image is located in /dev/hdb5 and has the name "message". Foreground: white, background: green, selection: black, background of the selection: light gray.
- the entry "default 0" in the third line indicates that the first menu entry ("title Windows") is the default selection for booting.
- line 4: The timeout is 10 seconds.
- Windows XP can normally not boot from a 2nd disk, and needs to be fooled
- there can be pointers to various kernels, e.g. with different boot parameters (such as under title FailSafe) or previous Linux kernels.

To stay friends with my family, I have set Windows XP as default boot (default=0 points to the first entry). The system starts automatically after a timeout of 10s with Windows XP.

Step 5 Adding module fssub.ko for CD and DVD
The subfs module was not in the 2.6.11 kernel.
So I downloaded submount-0.9.tar.gz from
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=81174

Start a konsole and run
$ tar zxvf submount-0.9.tar.gz
$ cd submount-0.9/subfs-0.9
$ make
And as root -
$ su
# make install

The module subfs is also in 9.2/suse/i586 (on ftp.suse.com & dvd 9.2):
km_submount_0.9-4.7.1.i586.rpm install subfs
submount_0.9-4.7.1.i586.rpm installs submount, hotplug & /etc/dev.d/51-subfs.dev
Please, see for this my additional post below: we need to patch the SuSe installation.

Step 6 Cleanup.
I moved the new kernel source to a more proper place.
$ uname -r (shows current kernel)
$ mv linux-2.6.11 /usr/src
And make a link of your kernel to /usr/src/linux
$ cd /usr/src
$ ln -s linux-2.6.11 linux
Later I found out that new modules still could not be installed properly.
The link source & build in /lib/modules still pointed to the old location, thus I did:
$ cd /lib/modules/2.6.11
$ ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.11 source
$ ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.11 build
Probably I will have to recheck whhen I install another kernel.

Step 7 Patching the kernel.
I noted a boot message "TIOCGDEV nout found by kernel".
Therefore I uploaded the latest stable kernel linux-2.6.11.2 at www.kernel.org, configured it as above, and gave it a separate Grub entry (title SuSe 2.6.11-2).
I booted into this new system:
$ uname -r (shows current kernel)
Then I took the patch for tiocgdev for kernel 2.6.11.2 at
http://dl.bytesex.org/patches/2.6.11-2

To check the patch procedure I did:
# cd ~temp
# mv linux-2.6.11.2 /usr/src
$ cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.11.2
$ patch -p1 --dry-run <./tiocgdev-2.6.11-2
and to actually modify kernel:
$ patch -p1 <./tiocgdev-2.6.11-2

The second kernel 2.6.11.2 was configured and installed with its own entry in Grub.

8. Installing Mplayer and lame.
One could install Mplayer and lame , as indicated also on
www.homerengineeringcorp.net/mythtv/myth.html .

I used the SuSe packages located at http://packman.links2linux.de

Start YaST, and select Software > "Change source of installation".
Click "add http" and select server "packman.iu-bremen.de" and directory "suse/9.2". Place the new server above the installation CD/DVD.
Via YaST > "Install and remove software" select package MPlayer. The rpm packages and dependencies will be uploaded and installed.
I also uploaded 'gxine' and 'xinelib1' from packman; SuSe's xinelib will be removed.

9. Ati (X300) graphics card.
Till now I used now the standard Vesa/Mesa setup ('radeon' driver), which is fine for 2D graphics, but the Ati X300 card can do more than that.
The installation instructions for the Ati 3D GL (fglrx 8.10.19) driver at "http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/downloads/x11" did not work for me. But an installation of the "ATI Proprietary Linux x86 Driver 8.10.19" was succesful. Two patches from http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=110 were needed for the ATI driver with my kernel 2.6.11.2. For a Nvidia card refer to the instructions from Nvidia and Suse !
Installation summary:
a. Get fglrx_6_8_0-8.10.19-1.i386.rpm at Ati in ~/tmp
b. Install, as root:
cd ~/tmp
rpm -ihv fglrx_6_8_0-8.10.19-1.i386.rpm
c. Get patch p1.patch and p2.patch for drivers 8.10.19 and copy them into /lib/m odules/fglrx
d. Patch drivers, as root:
cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
patch -p0 <../p1.patch
patch -p0 <../p2.patch
e. Install, as root:
cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
make.sh
cd /lib/modules/fglrx/
make_install.sh
f. Make backup's of xorg.conf, XF86Config and XF86Config-'hostname', sothat you can restore the old X11 setup, in case it does not work !:
cd /etc/X11
cp xorg.conf xorg.conf-backup
cp XF86Config XF86Config-backup
cp XF86Config- XF86Config--backup
g. Configure X11, as root; mostly default input, check the original XF86Config for answers:
fglrxconfig
h. Restart X11:
CTR ALT F1 (enter console mode)
init 3 (stop X11; a boot in failsafe mode will be at this level)
init 5 (start X11)
A full description is given at at this forum at message.id=5953

10. A few remaining issues:
- mounting of CD's seems unpredictable as a normal user (eject & reload may cure it),
and else one can still mount as su:
# mount /dev/dvd
# ls /dev/dvd
# umount /dev/dvd
thereafter the device is accessible as a normal user.

- Sound: kscd works ("use directly digital playback") as well as gxine, but not xmms. xmcd worked after reinstalling subfs from 9.2/suse/i586. no sound with firefox/konqueror on URLs with realplayer (RP 10 in SuSe 9.2), but gxine can be used as the soundplayer for firefox/konqueror.
Sound is via the Intel 82801FB(ICH6 Family)/AC'97 Audio Controller.

- Boot error message: hw_random.ko not found.

- Bootsplash: splash=silent at boot does not suppress the boot messages. it still boots as splash=verbose.


No warranty.

Message Edited by rolflist on 04-26-2005 02:55 AM