Having problems installing unofficial AMD64 Debian 3.1r0a Sarge

[steve2267]

I am currently wading through several forums, conducting searches, and Googling. I find myself swamped in data -- not necessarily information -- as I try to discern, divine, or otherwise find the answer(s) to my quest. As no single article or forum thread seem to answer my question(s) or solve my problem(s), please bear with me as I ask (probably many) questions. To wit...

Problem:

I am having difficulty installing the unofficial AMD64 Debian 3.1r0a Sarge release (dated 25-Jun-2005) on an Asus A8N-E (nvidia nforce4 ultra) motherboard.

Key error appears to be:

Setting up kernel-image-2.6.8-11-amd64-k8 (2.6.8-14) ...
/usr/sbin/mkinitrd: device /dev/hdi1 is not a block device

Background:

I am trying to build a 4-8 node Linux Beowulf cluster to run CFD software (Aerosoft's GASP 4.2, and Pointwise' Gridgen, for those that are curious.)

Here is my hardware setup:

• Preferred
  
  • Master Node
    
    • CPU -- AMD Athlon64 3800+ Venice
    • Motherboard -- Asus A8N-E (Nvidia nforce4 Ultra chipset)
    • Boot disk -- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (sole hard disk on SATA channel-1 (lowest numbered SATA channel))
    • Optical drive -- Samsung WriteMaster DVD+/-RW burner (IDE; master on 2nd IDE channel)
    • Video card -- Nvidia GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache (PCI-E or PCI-X -- what's the difference?)
    • 2GB (2x1GB) DDR-400 RAM
  • Slave Nodes
    
    • CPU -- AMD Athlon64 3200+ Venice
    • Motherboard -- Asus A8V (VIA K8T800Pro + VT8237 chipset) (I may want to switch these to Asus A8N5X or A8N-E to run a PCI-X or PCI-E gigabit ethernet NIC)
    • 1GB (2x512MB) DDR-400 RAM
• Fallback position
  
  • Master Node
    
    • CPU -- AMD Athlon64 3800+ Venice
    • Motherboard -- Asus A8V (VIA K8T800Pro + VT8237 chipset)
    • 2GB (2x1GB) DDR-400 RAM
    • Boot disk -- go get an Ultra133 PATA IDE disk (250+ GB)
    • Optical drive -- Samsung WriteMaster DVD+/-RW burner (IDE; master on 2nd IDE channel)
    • Video card -- Nvidia GeForce 6200LE (AGP model)
    • 2GB (2x1GB) DDR-400 RAM
  • Slave Nodes
    
    • CPU -- AMD Athlon64 3200+ Venice
    • Motherboard -- Asus A8V (VIA K8T800Pro + VT8237 chipset)
    • 1GB (2x512MB) DDR-400 RAM

Here are my questions:

1. What pure 64bit Linux distros will cleanly install onto an Nvidia nforce4 motherboard? (I (think) want a pure 64bit install (i.e. all software, utilities, libraries, everything is 64bit) for the performance since these are pure number crunching boxes and I want as much speed as I can get.
2. What pure 64bit Linux distros will permit me to have ONLY SATA disks installed, and will cleanly install onto them?
3. Can you briefly describe, or post a link to any HOWTO's, articles, or forum threads that describe the complete install process for Nvidia nforce4 motherboards? I take it the general idea is to install Linux to a level 3 mode (console only); reboot off of hard disk; install from floppy, or CD/DVD the Nvidia drivers necessary for nforce4 network and audio; then install the Nvidia graphics drivers. Is that it in a nutshell? Or do some Linux distros do all that right off the boot DVD?

My preference is to run Debian 3.1 Sarge. But I'm having issues installing from my AMD64 Sarge 3.1r0a release (dated 13-Jun-2005):

Setting up kernel-image-2.6.8-11-amd64-k8 (2.6.8-14) …
/usr/sbin/mkinitrd: device /dev/hdi1 is not a block device
Failed to create initrd image.
Dpkg: error processing kernel-image-2.6.8-11-amd64-k8 (--configure):
Subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 9

I found the following bug report:
Bug#301367: install: kernel not copied if target disk isn't /dev/hd[a-c] But I cannot followup on that bug because http://lists.debian.org appears down.

Any idea if I'm running into a Nvidia nforce4 issue with the unofficial AMD64 Debian Sarge release? Is it an issue with Nvidia nforce4? An issue with Sarge? Or the combination? (I know that Debian Sarge 3.1r2 is out as of this past April2006, but that is not a pure 64bit distro, as I understand it, and I want the full 64bits for the CFD performance.) Or could it be an issue with the Seagate drive and it's Perpendicular Recording Technology? The motherboard (supposedly) supports SATA300, and the Seagates are SATA300. Could SATA300 be an issue with the Sarge driver?



Links to articles are welcome. Pointers are welcome. Calling me stupid is welcome, as long as you point stupid to some useful information.

Thanks for any help.

[objuan]

Hello
I would download the etch iso from debian its one disk
it has kernel-image-2.6.16-2-amd64-generic-di this might work better for you.

[techieMoe]

What pure 64bit Linux distros will cleanly install onto an Nvidia nforce4 motherboard? (I (think) want a pure 64bit install (i.e. all software, utilities, libraries, everything is 64bit) for the performance since these are pure number crunching boxes and I want as much speed as I can get.

Aside from perhaps Linux From Scratch or a Stage 1 Gentoo install, I don't think you'll find a distro that will provide this. Most 64-bit Linux distros these days aren't 100% 64-bit compiled. As far as performance, you will more than likely not notice a difference running a 64-bit Linux on an AMD64 over a 32-bit Linux because the 64-bit Linuxes are not being rewritten, they're simply being recompiled. They do not take advantage of the new registers or instruction sets that are available with X86_64.

What pure 64bit Linux distros will permit me to have ONLY SATA disks installed, and will cleanly install onto them?

Any distribution that uses a 2.6.x or newer kernel will work just fine with SATA harddisks. I can't say about SATA CD/DVD drives though; I don't have any.

I take it the general idea is to install Linux to a level 3 mode (console only); reboot off of hard disk; install from floppy, or CD/DVD the Nvidia drivers necessary for nforce4 network and audio; then install the Nvidia graphics drivers. Is that it in a nutshell? Or do some Linux distros do all that right off the boot DVD?

Some distros will install the Nvidia display drivers out of the box, but none that I'm aware of will install your chipset (nforce) drivers by default. You may not need to install them however, since your onboard devices may work already.

(I know that Debian Sarge 3.1r2 is out as of this past April2006, but that is not a pure 64bit distro, as I understand it, and I want the full 64bits for the CFD performance.)

Again, I'm not convinced you'll notice any difference simply recompiling a 64-bit kernel on the AMD64. Have you tried just installing a 32-bit distro to see if the performance is up to your standards?

[steve2267]

Hello
I would download the etch iso from debian its one disk
it has kernel-image-2.6.16-2-amd64-generic-di this might work better for you.

Hey, can you give me a pointer to an URL from where I can download that kernel-image-2.6.16-2-amd64-generic-di image? I downloaded a 3 DVD testing version of AMD64 Debian. Is the current testing distro of Debian the same thing as etch?

WRT to the other suggestions / comments regarding 64bit vs 32bit Linuxes, I understand what you are saying. I haven't had time to try all various combinations and permutations... I needed to get a box up and running so I could start learning the CFD software for which I obtained eval licenses. In the end, I ended up installing Open SuSE Linux 10.1 from a box set that I bought in a store (didn't have time to wait to download SuSE -- my DSL was too slow).

But I will eventually try RedHat RHEL 4 (possibly also the older RHEL 3), Fedora Core 5, Debian SARGE/ETCH, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, maybe Gentoo as well. Part of the reason is that I may be needing to set myself up as a Linux CFD consultant, and knowing what runs on what, and being able to tell someone HOWTO do it could be in my future.

I may be able to test the Debian install on a different boxen later next week.

Thanks for the help. I'll try to remember to post back my results here (and elsewhere) later on.

[objuan]

Steve
here is the link to etch http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
the kernel is part of the debian installer. if this does not work for you
then recompile from source.