What is your setup like and why.

[RimBlock]

Note that the Atom boards (regardless of manufacturer) do not officially support 64bit OSs. The company behind Power VR chipsets are not producing 64bit drivers for the Atoms built in video. Standard VGA drivers work but you loose all the advantages of the video chipset. This is also why the new Atom boards are listed as only being able to take 4GB ram (32bit only able to address that much as standard) when I have confirmation it will run happily with 8GB and probably 16GB.

Do you mean the boards are fully 64bit compatible but for the reason no 64bit VGA drivers are available it is marketed as 32bit only and if I insert 8GB of SODIMM modules it is likely going to work?

Yep. My test D2700MUD had Windows Home Server 2011 running on it with no problem (64bit OS) and the only driver that was not available in 64bit flavor was the video driver so I had to use the standard VGA one. The Video chipset manufacturers clearly need a good slapping .

RB

[x9200]

Running it under 64bit Linux I was not even aware of this. On the other hand the bit-difference in VGA performance is probably negligible (as in general for 32 vs 64).

Getting back to D2500CCE, do you think there is a reasonable chance something like this:



or this:



is going to work with the board?

I have a feeling that it is not THAT simple for the mSATA standard.

[RimBlock]

Running it under 64bit Linux I was not even aware of this. On the other hand the bit-difference in VGA performance is probably negligible (as in general for 32 vs 64).

Getting back to D2500CCE, do you think there is a reasonable chance something like this:



or this:



is going to work with the board?

I have a feeling that it is not THAT simple for the mSATA standard.

A standard PCI riser should not be an issue as they generally just reposition the socket with little if any funky stuff inbetween (excluding 1 -> 2 PCI risers utilising bus mastering to share the dual tick double data rate of the newer PCI implementations).

There is a little confusion with mini-PCIe and mSATA. Mini-PCIe is a mini PCIe slot . By this I mean is is just a PCIe x1 slot which you can use for any mPCIe cards or even a mPCIe -> PCIe converter. A mSATA slot has the same form factor but the board has the SATA controller chips integrated for this slot and the witing of the connections is slightly different. Plugging a mSATA SSD in to a mPCIe slot wont work although the SSD will fit the socket and this has caused lots of confusion / frustration in the market. Some manufacturers have linked one of the motherboard SATA ports to the mSATA socket so it shares bandwidth and controller as a work around.

I have a mPCIe SATA card which includes the SATA chipset and two SATA ports. I have tried it on my D2700MUD board with no luck but that was in Windows Home Server 2011. I may try it in one of these D2500CCE boards as I have now received them. The one I have is this one.

RB

[x9200]

What is in the pictures is said or suggested to work as a direct mPCIe -> (m)SATA (+USB) interface what I thought was unlikely going to work. These are not just the raisers. If I go for D2500CCE I am simply short by one SATA port so I am looking around for a reasonably cheap solution. I would prefer to have 1x SSD (system); 1x hdd (data) and an optical drive. I can always use USB->SATA adapter but I was hoping for some more elegant solutions

[RimBlock]

What is in the pictures is said or suggested to work as a direct mPCIe -> (m)SATA (+USB) interface what I thought was unlikely going to work. These are not just the raisers. If I go for D2500CCE I am simply short by one SATA port so I am looking around for a reasonably cheap solution. I would prefer to have 1x SSD (system); 1x hdd (data) and an optical drive. I can always use USB->SATA adapter but I was hoping for some more elegant solutions

I do have some PCI to SATA cards around which would work if you have the space.

Oh, I see with the second pic now.. it is just bending the socket to vertical and SATA plugs. I strongly suspect they would not work but without actual specs and trying cannot be 100%.

There are also miniPICe SSDs around but you have to be careful as a lot of retailers do not know the difference and incorrectly lable them as miniPCIe & mSATA or just mSATA.

There is a reasonible overview in this thread on the Intel forums here and confirmation that miniPCIe SSD cards should work in the miniPCIe slot here.

Now, it seems that the Dell Mini9 and a few other laptops of other brands have a miniPCIe connector and use PATA miniPCIe SSD cards (i.e. miniPCIe cards with an inbuilt Parallel ATA controller). This means that a miniPCIe SSD listed as a replacement for a Dell Mini9 should work. Of course I offer no guarantees . Kingspec seem to do some for example. Seems they are not that fast but EBay may have some if you only want a small amount of storage with people upgrading.

RB

[x9200]

It's not only Dell, Eeepc netbooks got the same type, but comparing it to the 2.5" ssds they are pathetically slow and ridiculously expensive (as for the performance). There are also mPCIe SATA cards but not that cheap neither. And I need the PCI slot for a cctv card. Not a big pain for me anyway. Just don't prefer this kind of work arounds but I can live with this

[RimBlock]

It's not only Dell, Eeepc netbooks got the same type, but comparing it to the 2.5" ssds they are pathetically slow and ridiculously expensive (as for the performance). There are also mPCIe SATA cards but not that cheap neither. And I need the PCI slot for a cctv card. Not a big pain for me anyway. Just don't prefer this kind of work arounds but I can live with this

Sure, know what you mean after trying to get 6 reasonable speed SATA ports on the D2700MUD with only 2x SATA, 1x mPCIe and a PCI slot .

I keep asking why don't they just make a decent mPCIe adaptor and a dual port but then I realise what I am tying to do is a very niche use of the product .

I will report back on whether the miniPCIe -> dual SATA adapter I have works with the board (probably with CentOS 6.3) when i get a chance to check.

RB

[x9200]

Centos 6.3 on D2500CCE = not a good idea, unless you have plenty of time but what you are going to end up with defies the purpose of running an enterprise Linux. Many important components does not work out of box like lm_sensors (and their site is down to get a patch for the drivers). Even such basic things like convincing NIC to go Gbite has to be manually tweaked. Many popular packages not available. Also SSD performs half of its capability out of box.
I eventually ended up using Ubuntu server 12.04.1 LTS and at this point I am only still struggling with the graphics.

[RimBlock]

Centos 6.3 on D2500CCE = not a good idea, unless you have plenty of time but what you are going to end up with defies the purpose of running an enterprise Linux. Many important components does not work out of box like lm_sensors (and their site is down to get a patch for the drivers). Even such basic things like convincing NIC to go Gbite has to be manually tweaked. Many popular packages not available. Also SSD performs half of its capability out of box.
I eventually ended up using Ubuntu server 12.04.1 LTS and at this point I am only still struggling with the graphics.

Hmm, that is a little dissapointing. CentOS does seem to be a little behind the other Linux distros but for it to be pretty unworkable on these boards is surprising. Did you give Fedora a go as it tends to be a lot more up to date.

Seems that the video driver provided by the video chipset manufacturer is quite poor for Linux but there have abeen a couple of updates with suggestions of another coming (how true or good quality is another matter).

There is a long thread (10 pages) on the Intel support communities here which discusses various patches and results. There is also a link to an update that puts all the Cedarview PCI device details in if they are not already included in a distro. There is another one here about disabling the LVDS video connection on install which has been causing some people issues as it is detected as connected even after BIOS disable.

The network issue is very supprising as the network chipsets are standard well used Intel ones. I tend to manually set my network up on each install as I dislike the mess Network Mananger usually makes of it. I have never seen network links based on these chipsets default to lower than GbE speeds though but then have not tried with this particular board.

I will try having a look with my D2700MUD at home as it uses the same chipsets and see what happens.

On a side note, as much as some of us dislike it, Windows Home Server works out of the box excluding the video drivers (WHS 2011 is 64bit and these boards have no official 64bit support). For video defaulting to standard vga works fine for a server. For a desktop machine, Windows 7 32bit should also work fine including the video drivers).

Intel are set to release a new gen of server targeted Atom chips next year sometime but details are sketchy at this time. A little info has leaked out though like the report here.

RB

[x9200]

Surprisingly the issue with the VGA is the one mentioned earlier: binary drivers at this moment are for 32bit only even under Linux and I am running 64bit. For 32bit there is plenty of solutions available. I did not see any source codes for the drivers but did not look very hard for them. There is a (framebuffer) driver in the newer kernels >3.4.x (not included yet to the distributions) and eventually I ended up using 3.5.x and the graphics works fine but some other drivers I need are missing so I will likely have to recompile it.

I never use Network Manager for the reason you mentioned but regardless, without putting an extra option to the config file to enforce 1000 it did not work.

I have been with RH and later with Fedora since their births but stopped using it few years ago. It always needed more time to have it running with numerous problems to be solved when upgrading to newer versions. Centos is pretty much the same as far as I can see. If you can afford some more time fixing all the problems it's fine and you can earn very valuable experience but as this is not what I am doing for living I prefer to install Ubuntu, strip it down from all these eye-nice gadgetary impractical sh*t like the Unity *) that I am not going to use anyway and fix some minor problems only perhaps in expense of some stability and security - this is a home server anyway.
The whole problem with all these more reputable distribution (if I may call them like this) is that for obvious reasons they use solutions of well proven stability and security what as should be expected makes them not that much up-to-date with more recent hardware or software. If I take them as a base platform and after a week of working replace many parts with some "unproven" software it would be not the same system any longer and this is what I meant by defying the purpose. The only valuable thing I would gain this way is the experience. Ubuntu 12.04 is LTS meaning the system will have security and bug updates available for the next 5y. Centos 6.3. has it for 8y but then it is likely that I will upgrade the hardware within the next 5 years rather then after 8 years.

And I disagree, it's not disappointing, this is always fun making it working, but too much fan is also not good

* For Ubuntu server is even not the case. It is a pure text distribution so it is more about screening for some unnecessary startup services.

[RimBlock]

Surprisingly the issue with the VGA is the one mentioned earlier: binary drivers at this moment are for 32bit only even under Linux and I am running 64bit. For 32bit there is plenty of solutions available. I did not see any source codes for the drivers but did not look very hard for them. There is a (framebuffer) driver in the newer kernels >3.4.x (not included yet to the distributions) and eventually I ended up using 3.5.x and the graphics works fine but some other drivers I need are missing so I will likely have to recompile it.

I never use Network Manager for the reason you mentioned but regardless, without putting an extra option to the config file to enforce 1000 it did not work.

I have been with RH and later with Fedora since their births but stopped using it few years ago. It always needed more time to have it running with numerous problems to be solved when upgrading to newer versions. Centos is pretty much the same as far as I can see. If you can afford some more time fixing all the problems it's fine and you can earn very valuable experience but as this is not what I am doing for living I prefer to install Ubuntu, strip it down from all these eye-nice gadgetary impractical sh*t like the Unity *) that I am not going to use anyway and fix some minor problems only perhaps in expense of some stability and security - this is a home server anyway.
The whole problem with all these more reputable distribution (if I may call them like this) is that for obvious reasons they use solutions of well proven stability and security what as should be expected makes them not that much up-to-date with more recent hardware or software. If I take them as a base platform and after a week of working replace many parts with some "unproven" software it would be not the same system any longer and this is what I meant by defying the purpose. The only valuable thing I would gain this way is the experience. Ubuntu 12.04 is LTS meaning the system will have security and bug updates available for the next 5y. Centos 6.3. has it for 8y but then it is likely that I will upgrade the hardware within the next 5 years rather then after 8 years.

And I disagree, it's not disappointing, this is always fun making it working, but too much fan is also not good

* For Ubuntu server is even not the case. It is a pure text distribution so it is more about screening for some unnecessary startup services.

By dissapointing I meant that I sually find CentOS works out fo the box for me pretty well (CentOS Minimal). If I install Fedora or some of the other heavier releases then I thend to find the tools included to help tend to just get in the way . Maybe my thought processes are not quite what the designers were expecting .

I have read about people using the board for PFSense which IIRC is based on FreeBSD which may be worth a try if you have an interest (FreeBSD rather than PFSense particually).

Whilst 'tinkering' can be fun, I think that we come to a point where sometimes it is nice for the basics to 'just work' and then the little things can be fine tuned after .

I have been trying to assist someone elswhere in getting their Infiniband setup going on their home server using desktop parts, well apart from the infiniband cards obviously , and I am afraid I am now at the stage where when they are getting installer script errors (sh shell script unmatched bracket) on trying to install a firmware update package I may not be able to assist very effectively any more. Either the original install script has a bug and the dev team should fix it or the persons environment is a bit pear shaped and so I have no idea what they are working with .

Oh and mention of Ubuntu and Unified search.... there is an article on The Register today about Richard Stallmans (Free Software Foundation founder and GNU project creater) warning concerning Canonicals (Ubuntus creators, well the bits unique to Ubuntu at any rate) about the new Unified search feature reporting back to Canonical without notifying the user. Article is here for anyone interested to take a look.

RB

[x9200]

I was wondering by myself the other day where Ubuntu was going as the model adopted was clearly not that of RH. With main emphasis on the convenience and ease of handling targeted rather specific group of users. Now it is pretty obvious. Unfortunately they probably figured it out right and there will be no boycott of any sort. Yes, this is a serious warning. I don't have anything running under 12.10 but with any next major upgrade of any of my systems it will unlikely be Ubuntu.

[synack]

Speaking of Linux distros, I remembered at one point all I could get working (Xserver , KDE and all) on a Compaq lappy was Mandrake. That stayed for a while before I strayed into Gentoo and had all the time to compile literally every single bits. Also sometime in early 2000 I remembered buying the OpenBSD 3.6 CD from the man himself (Theo de Raadt) at one of the conferences and pretty much got that onto a SunSparc64 workstation in the office. Those were the days :-)

[nakatago]

I was wondering by myself the other day where Ubuntu was going as the model adopted was clearly not that of RH. With main emphasis on the convenience and ease of handling targeted rather specific group of users. Now it is pretty obvious. Unfortunately they probably figured it out right and there will be no boycott of any sort. Yes, this is a serious warning. I don't have anything running under 12.10 but with any next major upgrade of any of my systems it will unlikely be Ubuntu.

I've been getting worried about that myself; I just removed the shopping lens. My only consolation is people can and have had forked ubuntu. Mint is gaining popularity--I haven't tried it yet but I think it's getting there.

I don't think Ubuntu intends malice (like RMS claims) but I also don't savor the idea of sending stats behind my back.

The only bright side is, unlike Windows 8, you can remove the ads, albeit takes some tech savvy to do so.

[x9200]

The irony is that if they announced it properly probably not many would care too much and they still have trust and credibility now likely gone forever.
Time to go back to some old habits like randomly checking from time to time what connections are open.