ex475 with Linux (fedora 20)
You need a video cable for this as it requires a bios tweak
I got fed up with trying to figure out how to install WHS2011 onto my ex475. So I bit the bullet and just installed a linux distribution.
- Pull bottom drive from your ex475
- Put drive into spare USB container
- Create a VM using VM workstation and point it at a physical disk (Advanced settings for this)
- Install Fedora 20.
- Put drive back and boot it up
A couple of things I had to do. Disable Network Manager (NM) controlling the interface.
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
UUID="b65270ab-2b79-473d-8dce-942908383ff2" NM_CONTROLLED="no" BOOTPROTO="static" DEVICE="eth0" ONBOOT="yes" IPADDR=192.168.1.20 GATEWAY=192.168.1.1 NETMASK=255.255.255.0
To resolve the slow disk startup issue required tweaking a BIOS setting. You'll need video cable http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8066 just the bare minimum VGA only will do as keyboard/mouse on USB are fine.
- Change from 4P(IDE)+4S(RAID) to 4P(IDE)+4S(IDE)
The video switches to a small font I prefer to see the BIOS font and all the startup messages - /etc/sysconfig/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 KEYTABLE=us SYSFONT=True rd.lvm.lv=vg/lv_root rd.luks=0 rd.lvm.lv=vg/lv_swap LANG=en_US.UTF-8" GRUB_TERMINAL="console"
4x 1Tb drives online.
[root@cheese sysconfig]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs 50G 1.7G 46G 4% / devtmpfs 930M 0 930M 0% /dev tmpfs 939M 0 939M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 939M 1.1M 938M 1% /run /dev/mapper/vg-lv_root 50G 1.7G 46G 4% / tmpfs 939M 0 939M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs 939M 0 939M 0% /media /dev/sda1 485M 66M 394M 15% /boot /dev/mapper/vg-lv_home 864G 762G 94G 90% /u01 /dev/sdb1 917G 200M 908G 1% /u02 /dev/sdc1 917G 200M 908G 1% /u03 /dev/sdd1 917G 105G 803G 12% /u04
Same old boring processor. I never bothered upgrading this.
[root@cheese ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 79 model name : AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3400+ stepping : 2 microcode : 0x62 cpu MHz : 1000.000 cache size : 256 KB fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow up rep_good nopl extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm extapic cr8_legacy bogomips : 1999.88 TLB size : 1024 4K pages clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc
The ethernet NIC is working just fine at 1000Mbps
[ 7.024358] sis190: sis190 Gigabit Ethernet driver 1.4 loaded [ 7.024551] sis190 0000:00:04.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 7.024576] sis190: 0000:00:04.0: Read MAC address from EEPROM [ 7.042027] sis190: 0000:00:04.0: Atheros PHY transceiver at address 0 [ 7.178369] sis190 0000:00:04.0: eth0: 0000:00:04.0: SiS 191 PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapter at ffffc9000035c000 (IRQ : 19), 00:0a:e4:86:6b:83 [ 7.178554] sis190 0000:00:04.0: eth0: RGMII mode. [ 7.178660] sis190 0000:00:04.0: eth0: Enabling Auto-negotiation [ 18.728031] sis190 0000:00:04.0: eth0: mii ext = 0000 [ 18.734019] sis190 0000:00:04.0: eth0: mii lpa=c1e1 adv=01e1 exp=000f [ 18.738022] sis190 0000:00:04.0: eth0: link on 1000 Mbps Full Duplex mode
File transfers are significantly faster than when it was running Windows - I can sustain ~83 MB/s on a 40Gb file.