ChageLog: [... things are too much in flux right now to worry about a changelog. When things stabilize, I'll start recording changes.]
I am going to record here how to install and maintain Linux on a Jetway J7F4K1G2E-PB motherboard. I’m using Ubuntu server edition version 8.04 (Hardy Heron). The goal of this page is merely to record information about how to use Linux on that motherboard. This page is designed to make sense to people who already have experience maintaining hardware, maintaining servers and with Linux in general. Explanations are going to be terse. Use any of the following information at your own risk. Don’t just execute commands I record here without knowing what they do. This is not a tutorial. If you don’t know what you are doing, you can hose your system. You always need to adapt what I write here to your own situation.
Booting from a USB stick
It took me a long time to figure this one out. The key to booting from a USB stick is that you need to have enabled legacy USB support for all devices in the BIOS. Even then, getting a stick to boot can be a long shot. I eventually was able to get my USB stick to boot by making it look like a USB-ZIP device and selecting the proper boot device settings in the BIOS. I turned my stick into a ZIP device by using:
$ sudo mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdb 0 128 32
Then I followed the information here about booting from a USB stick. I used the “flexible way”. The only thing I did differently was to create a syslinux.cfg file with the following contents:
DEFAULT vmlinuz APPEND file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-server.seed initrd=initrd.gz quiet --
Various BIOS Settings
RAM
For some reason the default RAM timings were set at 4-4-4-7, I changed them to 4-4-4-12 to work with my 3AMD2533-512M1-R Winctec memory module. (I.e. I changed the RAS Active Time from 7T to 12T.)
Booting without a Keyboard
Set the “Halt On” parameter on the “Standard CMOS Features” screen to “All, But Keyboard”.
Installing and Configuring Ubuntu
Hardy Heron installs fine. There are issues however:
- The system will freeze if the PC speaker is used at all. Luckily it is not used during a normal boot procedure so it is possible to boot into Unbutu and then: a) rmmod pcspkr b) edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist to prevent the module from loading in the future. I do not know how to preserve PC speaker functionality.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Ben: Thanks for the report. I think there have been a few kernel upgrades since I initially installed. I’ll update and see again whether I have speaker issues.
August 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I’m using this motherboard to build a low-power server. I’ve just installed Ubuntu 8.04 server x86 on it and the speaker is working fine.
Just something I noticed- good luck with your project!