[GRLUG] debian on a p5q-em do

[John J. Foerch]

Hi all,

  Just sending the group a write-up of my experience installing Debian
on my new computer.  Hope this is of interest.

  The computer is an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93GHz CPU on an Asus P5Q-EM
DO, with 4GB DDR2-800 memory and Western Digital 640GB 7200rpm hard
drive.  The northbridge is Intel Q45, southbridge is Intel ICH10DO.
Onboard video is Intel GMA 4500.  Onboard sound is Realtek ALC1200.
Onboard nic is Intel 882567LM.  The board has both D-SUB and DVI video
connectors, one PCIe x16, two PCIe x1, and one normal PCI.  6 SATA
3GB/sec connectors, one IDE, one floppy, one COM, and misc like 1394.

  The first difficulty I ran into is that this mainboard will not boot
from an IDE cdrom.  I made quick work of this roadblock by buying
myself a nice new SATA dvd burner.

  First I tried to install Debian Testing from cd, but due to a
standing bug in the Debian installer, it crashed.  The workaround was
to install Debian Stable instead, and then use the apt-cdrom program
followed by `aptitude dist-upgrade' with the Testing cd.  Note the
architecture for this processor is paradoxically called amd64.

  At this point, I had kernel version 2.6.26, which does not have a
driver for the nic of this board.  I got the deb for linux 2.6.30 with
my other computer and copied it over on a pendrive that Newegg was
nice enough to give me for free.  In similar fashion, I installed the
usbmount package to automate mounting and unmounting of the pendrive.
With the new kernel, the network card worked, expediting the rest of
the software installation.

  I knew all along that the onboard video was the riskiest component,
in terms of support in X.org.  The xorg in Debian Testing does not
support this video card.  However, the xorg in Sid, xorg 7.4, does
support it.  I therefore put my mad skillz to work setting up
apt-pinning, a technique that lets you install and track specific
packages from a different repository, and I upgraded my xorg to the
version in Sid.

  My monitor has a DVI plug which I had not had an opportunity to use
until now.  When I switched over to DVI, xorg came right up in my
monitor's max resolution.

  Onboard sound seems to be working fine out of the box.

  In summary, I'm very pleased with the new computer, and can
recommend this mainboard to other linux users, with the small caveat
that you'll need a recent kernel and a recent X.org installed to make
it work.  This was a *very* nice upgrade from my Pentium III-600!

-- 
John Foerch