I tried installing Solaris 10 on the following an Asus AV8 Deluxe motherboard (with an AMD 64 939) and there were 2 problems ...

1. It did not recognise the onboard ethernet - Marvell Gigabit LAN

2. It did recognise the PCI slots.

The board has the VIA K8T800Pro chipset.

Do you think this will be resolved when OpenSolaris gets up and running? Or any ideas to resolve in any other ways?

What return "lspci" and "prtconf -pv" ?
There seems to be a driver available from the asus site (Marvell_other.zip), did you tried it ? booting in 32 bit mode ?
Why is this a problem ?
Could be.
Buy a cheap, supported (e.g. realtek) PCI ethernet card ...

Thanks for the repl jlliagre.

I did download the driver from the Asus site and burnt it to CD but I could not work out how to install the driver.

In linux, the ethernet card requires the sk98lin driver. I also just happended to notice on the CD there was a driver on cd1 for the sk98sol driver. Pesumably this is the same as the sk98lin ... lin = linux ... sol=solaris. I do not know how to install this driver either.

The other problem is that I have this error just prior to the installation "No disks found. Check to make sure disks are cabled and powered up .... etc". I try some googling and it looks another driver to install and not a simple one based on the number of posts and questions.

Sorry - in my post I missed a critical word .. ie "NOT: .. Solaris did not recognise the ehci pci support - therefore the plan to use a cheap PCI ethernet card is not really possible.

Therefore I have 2 problems remaining - ethernet & installation.

I would like to install and run Solaris so any help would be appreciated.

If no disk is not detected, there's no way you can install Solaris, so this is the main problem to fix.
Is your disk SATA based ?
Solaris supports SATA with several controllers, but VIA based are probably not.
I have a shuttle SK43G (KM400/A) and SATA disks are not seen, I've replaced them with IDE disks, and they are seen with no problem.

SML -or anyone- did you have any luck?
I have the same mobo. Installation of solaris 10 went ok, except for the ehci problem.
At boot I get:
"Cannot take control from Bios. EHCI is disabled"
This is a usb 2.0 issue, but it prevents me from getting the onboard Marvell yukon nic working.

I found the driver ok, but:

## Executing preinstall script.
## Installing part 1 of 1.
/etc/rcS.d/S50skge
/kernel/drv/amd64/skge
/kernel/drv/skge.conf
/usr/sbin/skge_vlan_config
/usr/share/man/man7d/skge.7d
[ verifying class <none> ]
[ verifying class <master> ]
## Executing postinstall script.
add_drv skge
Jun 20 22:14:51 [myhostname] usba: WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1043,80ed@10,4 (ehci0): ehci_init_ctrl: Unable to take control from BIOS. EHCI support disabled.
devfsadm: driver failed to attach: skge
Warning: Driver (skge) successfully added to system but failed to attach
SKGEsolx driver load failed: IP interfaces will not be configured!
pkgadd: ERROR: postinstall script did not complete successfully

Installation of <SKGEsolx> partially failed.
#

Its a known bug:
x86: EHCI Driver Unusable in Certain Motherboards (6204987)
The system software in the ICH5R controller in certain motherboards fails to take
control of EHCI hardware from the BIOS. The following error message is displayed:
ehci_init_ctrl: Unable to take control from BIOS. EHCI support disabled.
Workaround: None.

So my questions are:
1. Has anyone used a different pci nic successfully on a board with a via chipset?
2. Any other comments?

thanks. tobyl

You have detailed the problem more accurately. As you correctly noted the ehci problem is USB2.0.

As per jlliagre's response, yes, there is a very easy option to resolve the NIC problem ... just buy a new one! I bought a cheap 100Mbps card for about AUD$20 - US$15 - a PCI Realtek NIC. Exactly as jiliafre sugested. I then just disabled the onboard Marvell NIC and it was all perfect. Easy. The only thing not working is USB2.0 but I never really use this anyway.

DHCP was a breeze and it all works well - except the video performance ... I have the nvidia driver isntalled, but cannot get the agpgart running on the VIA chipset.

Same the hours of frustration and hassle and spend US$15.

Thanks SML, I shall do as you suggest.
tobyl

I still have continued frustrations with the video performance. Have tried a Radeon 9250 and Nvidia FX5500 with no luck.

Before you buy the NIC, maybe consider updating the motherboard and selling the A8V on ebay. Apparently the PCI-E boards do not have the agpgart problem so maybe the A8V-E Deluxe is a good option. I would also like to get SATA working but the A8V doesn't seem to be compatible.

Let me know how you go with the video performance.

Hi SML

My graphic card is a GeForce FX 5900XT. I have used nvidia graphics cards for years because of superior support in linux. This card works fine for me with the A8V Deluxe mobo and a AMD64 3500+ cpu. Truth is that I am a linux person at heart, and I have not even tried yet to get 3d performance from solaris (and the nic issue has distracted me).
I wonder though, if your mouse driver could be causing problems. I say that because I have a simple 2 button msoft Wheel Mouse Optical 1.1A usb with the 'auto' option set in xorg.conf. When I used my linux xorg setup which is set to

Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

I got into all sorts of weird problems and reverted to 'auto', which does not display the problems you describe in your other post.

have you got a mouse that could be the problem?

I am still using the nvidia driver that came with my solaris 10 iso.

My experimentation with solaris is out of curiosity and also I am applying for a job where unix is involved, and I wanted to know how different it was from my beloved Slackware, so I dont intend to go for high performance from solaris, just stability.

tobyl

Ok, i have close hardware to you.

AMD64 3500+, A8V deluxe with wifi on-board.
Installation is not problem, but it have some nasty features.

First, this board uses Marvell chip 88E8001-lkj.
This driver is included only with some 64 bit linuxes, not with solaris. but driver exists, and you can install it.
Solaris detects your disk, i did install on ATA drive, not SATA. Partitioning is not problem, but!!! stop here, if you are installing as additional op system.
solaris can't coexist with reiser, non does'nt it handle ntfs partitions. it treats ntfs as "BIG-Dos". Installing solaris means disk as slices, it creats something like shell around your existing partitions, and you will loose normal partition table logic.

so do install on separate disk only. unless you wanna loose all you have on your drive. I am not solaris expert. maybe there are workarounds....but you are warned.

as X, nvidia Accelerated drivers work fine, but this does not mean desktop performance.
I would say-solaris is not definitely desktop system. I read from OS-news many complaints , and wondered, is all that possible they complain? Answer is yes.
Solaris gives you no-shiny (bit buggy as java applications tend to be sometimes, desk with mouse moving jumping manner. lets say, you open some configuring window, and cursor starts move bit scattered,and thats all the way.) and this is other users told also. menus are limited but functional. but there are not too many useful programs for desktop user.

If you are CDE man, no problem, cde is as it has always been...


10th release gives you Java-desktop environment, what is kind of "pointless" gnome.
why pointless?
It does'nt shine, nor perform. Worse of that, programs included are quit limited value. (staroffice and mozilla are ok as usual) but any kind GUI configuring tools are much weaker than in linux. same about audio or video multimedia choices. so if you want configure your system ,do it manual way.
i would say, jde environment is valuable as WM in linux. it does something, but need a lot knowledge's at command-line.

Basically i would say-java as whole desktop means blunder, and i wonder, how solaris developers do not see this. I don't say-java is not usable as application base, it is, but not in way they implemented it to sol10.


yes, and usb device handling needs additional work.
i didn't reach this point, i removed solaris after one day trial.

i do not say any word about solaris as server, i am not able to estimate it's value as such.

You are indeed not a Solaris expert, nor a BSD one for that matter, as the latter uses the same slice subpartitioning logic.

To summarize, Solaris can coexist with other O/S, it won't break existing partitions unless you ask it to do it.
I strongly disagree, you having some performance issues with a specific hardware and a specific driver doesn't implies the O/S is not suitable for desktop use. I've been using it for years, and I'm very happy with it.
Do you mean java applications are more buggy than applications written in another language ?
Anyway, this is irrelevant, as probably not even one java application is running on JDS when you observe the issues you're complaining of ...
Last Solaris express release has USB hot plug added, is this what you are looking for ?

Your problem .... "with mouse moving jumping manner" .. is because you have not set-up your graphics card correctly to align with your hardware.

As Solaris develops no doubt video performance will be easier for you to set-up and configure.

Maybe try Solaris Express Community Edition in a few months time.

yes, you may be correct, but then give some hint, for my next trial, how do i remove it next time in manner, not destroying needed partitions. i mean-not installation broke things, but improper removing solaris. but result is same, and no known utility from windows or linux, didn.t fix partition table thereafter. because i hadn't anything so valuable on em, i did'nt tried raw recovery methods or "get my data back" lookalike programs.

only point i can accept here, you must know solaris partition handling very well, before giving "him" a try in mixed environments. and that was my point, i wanted to warn some other "experts like me"
it is good to know, that you use it and are satisfied. And i didn't say, that solaris is'nt usable as desktop.
i said that in means of sun JDE or solaris 10. you probably do not use that one for years-or do you? Besides the fact OS news article and some other reviews have quit a lot of comments and complaints, and not all people as as stupid and thumb as me hopefully. But they also complain same issues on quit powerful hardware.
I have 64BIT 3500+ A8v here, so i386. Nvidia 5600.
I do know, when something feels fast.
Question is in comparison between solaris and other Unixes give on same hardware.
Actually i do mean.
Yes, java based applications have "often, i would like to say more often" GUI issues , artifacts and etc. They also are somewhat "slower"
Now it needs to be some application developer, to proof all that...
Lets say, java GUI is not as smooth-when rendering graphics. do not ask me why.
And as you are using solaris, you should know, that some configuration applets are written in java on solaris10. and if you open some of them-providing real-time graphs about system functions -those graphs are ugly. I do not know, why they are ugly, but this is, how it draws simple graphic lines.
Never seen such ugliness in GTK applications.
i sayd, did'nt reach that point.
yeah it should be solution.

overall

let's say, you may be right, i am not ready for solaris experience as desktop.i would say, because-i have seen, using op systems, what give me just MORE on same platform (currently we are talking about desktop features). Please do not make one OS as religion, i have been reading your posts here before. you are expert on it for sure, but what is for you, may not be best for others.

i would also like to say, solaris last approach do not feel optimal for me, but remember this is just my opinion.

ok, maybe some hint, what exactly was mis-configured?
i had correct graphics driver, right resolution, refresh, mouse scroll and etc?
i was not sitting in vesa frame-buffer. how can accelerated nvidia driver be scattered like that?
impression was something-like system just limit resources for Desktop GUI, when you are out of overall resources.

and what will happen on those few months? Express community-differs in means of what?
is it free for download? something like debian sid approach?

Q1
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thre...D=796&tstart=0
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisx86/message/25071

Q2
Plenty of htreads on opensolaris.org .. however ..
In order of cutting edge code and level of testing:
Solaris Express: Community Edition
Solaris Express
Solaris

Seems like the Solaris Express editions come out every 2 months or so. Current version is 6/05.
Current Community Edition is Build 16.