Asus strikes again, and what to do about it?

[time]

So this morning, I was awoken by a call from a different timezone, telling me a file server had died. After a few hours of trying to find someone who could speak English (this is in a nominally English-speaking country: New Zealand), I got someone on site who confirmed that the motherboard had died.

This is or was an Asus A8N SLI 939 SE motherboard, about two years old and never missed a beat 24x7. Physical examination showed that a retaining pin on the poxy Northbridge cooler had popped or broken, thereby presumably frying the chip.

I never wanted to use this stupid heap of Asus techno-dung, but at the time, you couldn't get the Gigabyte equivalent for love or money (it had a real heatsink rather than a cheapo fan-sink). Now the business (too small - or cheap - for a second server) is at a standstill while I fruitlessly try to locate a Socket 939 nForce 4 motherboard at short notice.

Naturally, the backups hadn't been working properly, so now I need to get the box repaired to recover the data.

The box is running Suse Linux 9.2 (I think). What modern chipset has the best chance of compatibility?

 

[Mercutio]

You should be able to get something with AM2 and Nforce4. 6100/6150-series boards are basically nforce 4s and they're basically fine in Linux.

For what it's worth, Linux isn't likely to puke or kernel panic from a hardware change. There's a decent chance you could just pop in whatever and the system would probably come up. I know I freely switch my SuSe 9 classroom machines between SiS, nVidia and Via systems and the only hiccup I ever have is if I accidentally put the drive in a machine with an nVidia graphics card (then I just have to start runlevel 3 and reconfigure X).

 

[Clocker]

You should be able to get something with AM2 and Nforce4. 6100/6150-series boards are basically nforce 4s and they're basically fine in Linux.

For what it's worth, Linux isn't likely to puke or kernel panic from a hardware change. There's a decent chance you could just pop in whatever and the system would probably come up. I know I freely switch my SuSe 9 classroom machines between SiS, nVidia and Via systems and the only hiccup I ever have is if I accidentally put the drive in a machine with an nVidia graphics card (then I just have to start runlevel 3 and reconfigure X).

Sometimes you scare me. Very impressive.

 

[Mercutio]

You have your hobbies and I have mine.

Either that our you are remembering that one thread about Asia Carrera.

 

[time]

Thanks for that. Someone suggested an Asus M2N, but I wasn't convinced the network setup was close enough to the original A8N-SLI (Cicada PHY) to justify buying another Asus. There have also been derogatory posts on Linux forums about the BIOS.

The place who was going to sell me an M2N only had X2 5600 CPUs in stock. A quick check told me we'd need a new PS as well to cover one! I drew the line at this point.

So I went for a Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 instead. Nforce 4 chipset, with a Marvel PHY - as far as I can tell. A 65nm X2 3800, and 2x 1GB DDR667 modules from Hynix.

I'm sweating on the fact that we're now going from one core to two while trying to recover a 64-bit Suse 9.2 installation. Do you think it excessively paranoid to disconnect one drive from the mirrored pair while messing about with this?

I should point out that the person replacing all these bits doesn't have any Linux knowledge ... I'm feeling nervous enough to get him to block copy one of the drives onto a new drive and experiment with that first.

BTW, I'm 3,000km away and can't afford the time to fly there and back. Not that my Linux knowledge was ever that good, and I've forgotten most of it anyway.

 

[Mercutio]

Assuming you are using the precompiled kernel, you will boot a non-smp kernel (no harm there!) and you'll probably have to configure the new NIC with YaST. It's never a bad idea to make a backup but it should be straightforward to make the switch you need.

 

[Adcadet]

Wow, interesting discussion. Makes my domestic tech support calls look absolutely kindergarten. Well, they basically are. Time and Merc, when I move, can I get you guys to run tech support for my family?

 

[time]

Well, I finally got a call today from the tech I sent onsite. It took about an hour to disassemble the PC (a caster bolt fouled the original motherboard and the 'screwless' clamp bracket had to be removed to allow access to the graphics card screw.

After ripping out the guts, he installed the new motherboard, dual-core CPU and RAM, powered it up, and stood back.

It booted perfectly and worked perfectly. The tech didn't even know the login.

This machine has had to deal with several unexpected power failures (the UPS never did get wired up ...), but hasn't missed a beat or needed any intervention in over two years.

Why does anyone run anything else other than Linux?

 

[Santilli]

XP and 2003 Server appear to be pretty darn good, and, so is 2000...

Still, I wouldn't do what you did with a windows install with any success....

GS

 

[Mercutio]

That's 'cause Windows is stupid.
You can pretty much replace a motherboard with a Via northbridge with any other board with a Via Northbridge.
You can also do Intel to Intel or SiS to Intel or Intel to SiS and have zero problems.

nVidia stuff is obnoxiously inconsistent. So is ATI. And you really can't go Via to anything else.

Those are the rules, and they're too damned complicated to actually use in the field, so EVERYTHING turns into a repair install.

I do very much love Linux servers.