What flavor of Linux drivers are compatible with Ubuntu? How do I load them?

[MichaelD]

Look out! Windoze person posting in the *nix forum!

I'm planning on loading Ubuntu Server on my Supermicro X9SCA-F based rig and want to load the drivers for the MB/NiC. Supermicro only lists Redhat and SuSe as non-Windows OSs.

See for yourself. Copy/paste my MB model from above.
http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/resource_links.cfm

Which flavor is compatible with Ubuntu? Is Ubunutu based on some "parent" flavor of Linux? Also, is there an .exe installer, or must the drivers be loaded from the command line? How do I do that? How do I know if the install was successful? IIRC, Linux doesn't have a "Device Manager" like Windows does...or maybe I just couldn't find it?

Thanks for your time with these n00b questions.

 

[lxskllr]

Ubuntu is based on Debian. If it were me, I'd first try to install, and see what happens. If something doesn't work, I'd go from there.

 

[MichaelD]

Thank you, lxskllr. That is what I'm intending on doing...just trying to be proactive and obtain the drivers, if available. I know that Ubuntu Desktop had every driver that my 3-year old Netbook needed, right out of the box. WiFi, touchpad, card reader, everything. And I know that SM motherboards are Linux-friendly. So I'm hoping for the best.

 

[Stone Rain]

Normally Ubuntu finds and installs drivers for your hardware upon install. If a specific piece of hardware FAILS to work, then you start hunting for drivers. But I've never had that particular issue. And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure where I would find trustworthy drivers for Ubuntu, except within Ubuntu's official repositories.

 

[Nothinman]

Generally the only drivers you may have to mess with are for wifi and video and the latter will usually work just fine but not be accelerated. For just a server, everything should work just fine out of the box because 99% of Linux drivers are included in the kernel.

 

[MichaelD]

That's good news. Thanks, guys.

I didn't have too much time to mess with it last night, but I tried installing Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS on the Supermicro board. For some reason, it doesn't like to install with my LSI 8888ELP SATA RAID card installed (OS drive is NOT on the RAID card); though I did not have a chance to try different PCI-E slots (maybe an IRQ issue?). I just yanked the card and reran the install.

It didn't like installing from a USB stick (latest Pendrive)...was missing some installer files, even though the MD5 checksum was good on my download. Burned a CD. Got some other missing installer file message...it let me skip that part, but now I can't login. No biggie. I will try again tonight. On a related note, Ubuntu installs stupid fast on an SSD. :thumbsup:

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Nothinman]

That's odd. It can be confusing selecting the correct drive when you have more than one in at install time, however having an extra controller installed shouldn't break the installer. Do you have any details on what happened?

Since you received errors about missing files or similar I'm guessing the download may have been bad or the installer detected it needed a package for your hardware that's not on the install disc like some firmware.

 

[MichaelD]

That's exactly what I thought too; corrupted download. But I checked the MD5 checksum and it's a match. Weird, right? I may download it again tonight, just for grins.

I wonder if the fact that I had the IPMI management port connected to my switch had anything to do with it? Just guessing here. I didn't get any network-related error messages, but you never know. I didn't write down the exact error messages, but they were "Installer missing for xxyyzz" type messages that just kicked me back to the main "Install menu" where you get to pick what step of the install process you want to proceed with. Sorry I'm not more descriptive...I'm a total noob at Linux.

 

[lxskllr]

My guess would be a bad USB drive AND a bad CD burn. USB drives can be finicky. I've had some that work great for everything but installing O/Ss. Optical media sucks, and if the planets aren't aligned right, you can get a bad burn. I'd try a different USB drive, or a reburn of the disc on a slow speed. I usually kept the burn rate around 4x for things I wanted done right.

 

[MichaelD]

I'll try a slower CD burn rate. Thanks, lxskllr.

You know, come to think of it, I've not had good luck with that USB stick for Windows USB key installs either. Good point there. It works great for "sneakernetting" files from one place to another, but not so well for OS installs. Weird. I really need to buy a "good USB key." Maybe I'll post in GH about that.

It will be nice if I can get Ubuntu Server running and learn a little about it; it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. I run Ubuntu on my netbook, but I'm totally a GUI-guy...don't know much about the inner workings or command line, aside from checking my IP and easy tasks like that.

ps
Could the fact that my SSD is SATA3 and plugged into a SATA3 port on the MB have anything to do with install probs? Another guess, but worth asking.

 

[Nothinman]

Did you check the MD5 of the USB disk or CD after the burn?

 

[MichaelD]

Did you check the MD5 of the USB disk or CD after the burn?

No, I didn't. I didn't know you could do that. I thought that once you burned/extracted the .iso image, the checksum would change. Am I incorrect? I just compared the posted MD5 sum for the version I DL'd with what the Windows MD5 Sum checker program gave me for the DL'd .iso and they matched.

 

[Nothinman]

No, I didn't. I didn't know you could do that. I thought that once you burned/extracted the .iso image, the checksum would change. Am I incorrect? I just compared the posted MD5 sum for the version I DL'd with what the Windows MD5 Sum checker program gave me for the DL'd .iso and they matched.

No, the checksum stays the same because the data that you see is exactly the same. The device specific stuff for the drive, disc, etc has to be asked for specifically by an app using special SCSI commands. But if you do a bit for bit copy of the disc back to a file (e.g. dd if=/dev/sr0 of=./blah.iso' in Linux) you should have the exact same file as when you started.

I don't know how to do it in Windows, but in Linux block devices are just files so once the burn is done you can just md5sum /dev/sdb, /dev/sr0 or whatever device node corresponds to the device you used.

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks, Nothinman. I'll try it again tonight.

 

[MichaelD]

My guess would be a bad USB drive AND a bad CD burn. USB drives can be finicky. I've had some that work great for everything but installing O/Ss. Optical media sucks, and if the planets aren't aligned right, you can get a bad burn. I'd try a different USB drive, or a reburn of the disc on a slow speed. I usually kept the burn rate around 4x for things I wanted done right.

Just wanted to let you know that you were correct. It was a bad CD. I downloaded the Server .iso again (same checksum) just to be sure, and I burned at 24x (the slowest Power ISO allowed for my drive) and it installed with no problems, no error messages at all.

Then of course, me being a noob and not being able to do anything from the command line, and Linux documentation not really detailing what each package does, I ran a "sudo install ubuntu-desktop" (or similar syntax), thinking that it would just give me a GUI for Server.

Ah no. It gave me Ubuntu Desktop. /facepalm LOL!

So tonight I'll be reloading again. It only took about 20 minutes loading to an SSD so it's no biggie. I have DL'd the Server Guide and guess I'll be going page by page to set up a file server. It's 300+ pages, so printing isnt' an option...bit of a PITA to switch screens back and forth to read what I'm supposed to do, then do it. But it's a learning experience for sure.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Then of course, me being a noob and not being able to do anything from the command line, and Linux documentation not really detailing what each package does, I ran a "sudo install ubuntu-desktop" (or similar syntax), thinking that it would just give me a GUI for Server.

Ah no. It gave me Ubuntu Desktop. /facepalm LOL!

So tonight I'll be reloading again.

1. You told it to install a GUI on your server, so it installed a GUI on your server. If that isn't what you wanted, then I'm not quite sure what you were expecting

2. Just because you're running the Ubuntu Desktop, doesn't make your server any less of a server. There's no need to reload.

 

[MichaelD]

I guess I was expecting "a Server GUI?" Something similar to a Windows Server OS GUI is what I was expecting to get. At the top of the desktop it says "Ubuntu Desktop" so i assumed my OS had been converted somehow.

Another reason I thought my OS was converted was that I don't see any "server type task" icons under settings. Nothing about Samba/DNS/Bind/etc. Just the normal "desktop system type" icons. Like I said, I'm new at this.

 

[lxskllr]

1. You told it to install a GUI on your server, so it installed a GUI on your server. If that isn't what you wanted, then I'm not quite sure what you were expecting

2. Just because you're running the Ubuntu Desktop, doesn't make your server any less of a server. There's no need to reload.

Full Ubuntu is a bit much though. I'd go with the lxde desktop. That gives enough to get stuff done, but doesn't include the kitchen sink.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Another reason I thought my OS was converted was that I don't see any "server type task" icons under settings. Nothing about Samba/DNS/Bind/etc. Just the normal "desktop system type" icons. Like I said, I'm new at this.

Although local GUI programs exist to manage Linux servers, the bulk of the management is done by either modifying configuration files and issues commands at the command line, or using a graphical web interface.

For the web interface route, I used to use webmin back in the day. I'm not sure if it's still recommended. For a small multi-role server, you may want to think about using somethin like ClearOS or Zentyal.