# nVidia ION Supported?



## fbsd_fuse (Aug 11, 2009)

Hello,
Can anyone confirm FreeBSD's support of the nVidia ION platform. This is a chipset combination for a Mini-ITX motherboard with an Intel Atom CPU.

ION usually gets used as the name for the GPU, but I'm mainly concerned with FreeBSD's support of the nVidia motherboard chipset MCP7A-ION and in particular its ethernet and SATA functions.

I can see a few people are using Mini-ITX boards with Intel chipsets, but how about nVidia's?

Thanks
Aaron


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## dennylin93 (Aug 12, 2009)

See the hardware notes for a complete list supported hardware.

Ethernet for the following adapters seem to work:


> NVIDIA nForce MCP73 Networking Adapter
> NVIDIA nForce MCP77 Networking Adapter
> NVIDIA nForce MCP79 Networking Adapter


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## fbsd_fuse (Aug 12, 2009)

dennylin93 said:
			
		

> See the hardware notes for a complete list supported hardware.



Thanks for the link. I've previously checked the supported hardware list and found a few close matches for support... but it's hard chipset to predict and the documentation online is inconclusive.

For example the page at the following link describes the chipset on a Pegatron IPX7A-ION motherboard top-to-bottom as a nVidia MCP79...

http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/Pegatron/IPX7A-ION/

Where the page on this link describes the same board as having  a Realtek RTL8211CL ethernet and Realtek ALC662 audio (not that I really care about the audio)...

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ipx7a_ion330

I'm more inclined to believe it's all nVidia based but I was hoping to find someone who could share the dmesg from a that type of motherboard so I could be sure.



			
				dennylin93 said:
			
		

> Ethernet for the following adapters seem to work:



I've just put down a few $'s on the Point of View ION-MB330 so I'm hoping the devices will all come up as something MCP7 related.

Also, nVidia has recently released updated GPU FreeBSD drivers for the platform so I think it's a safe bet the rest of the chipset is mostly functional.

Still - if anyone has one of these boards I'd appreciate it if you could share the dmesg output. 

Aaron


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## ajo (Aug 13, 2009)

I've just installed FreeBSD on a Zotac ION N330.
As far as I could see FreeBSD 7.1 and upward works. On FreeBSD 7.0 atleast the ethernet isn't working during the installation process.

Also on the Zotac ION N330 there's a mini-PCI Express (AzureWave AR5B91) WiFi-card that doesn't work.
I've tried to use ndisgen at it seems to work most of the time, kernel gave up on me once. And "ifconfig ndis0 scan" is REALLY slow. But it can connect to an existing network 'n all.


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## fbsd_fuse (Aug 13, 2009)

ajo said:
			
		

> I've just installed FreeBSD on a Zotac ION N330.



Excellent! Good news.

Could you share the output of dmesg and pciconf please? A PM is ok if there's rules about keeping the forum beautiful. 

Thank you for the confirmation.


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## aragon (Aug 13, 2009)

Does the graphics controller work with the FreeBSD nvidia drivers?


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## ajo (Aug 14, 2009)

Installing the NVIDIA drivers was one of the first things I did, it is the VDPAU in this little beauty i am after! And it seems to work. Displays some nice free advertising from NVIDIA when starting x aswell.  Though I did not have time to check the VDPAU before testing 8.0 BETA2.

Though the issue with the AzureWare (Atheros) WiFi-card made me try out the 8.0 BETA2, which correctly detects the device as an Atheros card. But I am having issues with the install in that it stops in the "ROOT MOUNT ERROR:"-menu where my keyboard stops working, and it is trying to access the correct device. I really do not know how to proceed.
So a dmesg is probably not so interesting at this point - but i might try to install 7.1 again and upgrade that to CURRENT instead of 8.0 BETA2 - will be back with more news then.


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## fbsd_fuse (Aug 14, 2009)

ajo said:
			
		

> But I am having issues with the install in that it stops in the "ROOT MOUNT ERROR:"-menu where my keyboard stops working



I've just had a similar issue with 8.0 BETA2 on a virtual PC and found installing from the latest snapshot was better. Maybe the snapshot would help you? I grabbed the 8.0-CURRENT ISO from here:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/200906/


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## ajo (Aug 14, 2009)

Thanks for the tip. I will give it a try if CURRENT does not work.

There should be a dmesg attached to this post.


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## fbsd_fuse (Aug 14, 2009)

Thanks for the dmesg. It all looks good - except for the hard drive speed is slow.

From the dmesg...

ad4: 95396MB <FUJITSU MHV2100BH 0081002D> at ata2-master UDMA33

The specs for that drive say it's a 2.5" SATA unit - possibly SATA II? It is capable of more than UDMA33.

Do you think this is a BIOS thing (running in ATA compatibility mode?) or the FreeBSD driver?

Thanks


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## aragon (Aug 14, 2009)

I'm curious to see what these are:


```
pci0: <memory, RAM> at device 0.1 (no driver attached)
pci0: <memory, RAM> at device 3.1 (no driver attached)
pci0: <memory, RAM> at device 3.3 (no driver attached)
pci0: <processor> at device 3.5 (no driver attached)
```


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## ajo (Aug 14, 2009)

The buildworld failed with a cryptic error code 1.

The only thing attached to the motherboard is 2 GB of DDR2 RAM, the SATA (not SATA II) HDD and the "integrated" mini PCI-Express AzureWave/Atheros WiFi-module.

So my guess would be that it's the WiFi that it can't detect, or maybe it's the GPU -  the NVIDIA drivers aren't installed here? I really have no idea.


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## aragon (Aug 14, 2009)

Can you paste your buildworld failure?


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## ajo (Aug 15, 2009)

Sorry can't do that it's gone. Will give it another try tonight though.
Maybe I can post it then.. 

There's no ATA connections at all on this card and the BIOS settings looks alright.


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## aragon (Aug 15, 2009)

Are you using ccache?


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## ajo (Aug 15, 2009)

Don't know what that is. But I haven't been doing anything really with this installation, so if it's on by default it's on.

After csup'ing again today and buildworld - it worked. Now I'm off for buildkernel and if that turns out well and all I'll have some more info on the Atheros/AzureWave card.
Maybe I'll put that in another thread - I guess fbsd_fuse got his answer.

But if I get this to work I'd be happy to help you with anything regarding the NVIDIA drivers you'd like to know. I'll let you know if the 8.0-CURRENT works.


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## ajo (Aug 15, 2009)

Well that was a waste of time. Got the same error when booting up. buildworld, buildkernel and installkernel followed by mergemaster -p seemed to do what it's supposed to - but when booting i got the same error as before.

In my current setup I rely on using an USB-stick to install FreeBSD, which is troublesome to say the least when only running Windows. I'll give it another try with BETA3 when that get's released here in the beginning of next week - hopefully by that time this issue has been resolved.


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## ajo (Aug 20, 2009)

After failing to install the i386 8.0-BETA2 (installation can't find boot disk, and keyboard hangs/system freezes don't know which) I've now tried the AMD64 8.0-BETA2 version.

This version I can't even get to install. I get the following error messages:


```
Unable to find device node /dev/ad4s1b in /dev. The creation of the file systems will be aborted.
```

In the debug TTY I can read the following:

```
Found rootdev at ad4s1a
Found vardev at ad4s1d
Found tmpdev at ad4s1e
Found usrdev at ad4s1f
Found swapdev at ad4s1b
```


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## pleventi (Aug 26, 2009)

Hi,

I've got FreeBSD 7.2 running (courtesy of FreeNAS 7.0RC1) and can confirm that GigE works on the ION, but SATA is limited to UDMA33.

Has anyone here run 8.0 to see if it helps the SATA issue?  Release notes make no mention of it, and haven't yet had a chance to try myself.


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## tangram (Aug 26, 2009)

You need to provide more info. Which motherboard? Which chipset? Posting the output of [cmd=]dmesg[/cmd] will help.

Also for FreeNAS specific issues/questions will be better answers from their forums/support.


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## pleventi (Aug 27, 2009)

Never mind -- problem solved.  I hadn't enabled AHCI in the BIOS.  Now everything's humming away at SATA300.


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## ale@ (Aug 27, 2009)

Can you try with 8.0-BETA3-amd64-memstick.img to see if the HDD/Installation issues are solved and if all devices are correctly working?


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## fbsd_fuse (Aug 30, 2009)

*Pov ion 330*

To reply to my original post. I've recently received my Point of View ION 330 motherboard and after a few small issues the board is working perfectly now. A 8.0-BETA3 dmesg is attached.

I had two issues getting things working. First up was USB - I had to disable USB 2.0 in the BIOS to get FreeBSD to boot. It's now working with USB 1.0 and a USB keyboard and mouse work perfectly. The second issue was the drives being picked up as ATA-33. As posted above, the solution was to change the SATA controller settings in BIOS from SATA to AHCI. They're now working at SATA-300.

I haven't tested sound or a GUI yet. But it's doing everything I need for a NAS box.


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## ajo (Nov 22, 2009)

Sorry for the bump. But I thought it's better to keep this in one thread since it, in my opinion, is all related.

Now I've given 8.0 one more try on my Zotac ION N330.
What I did was `# freebsd-update upgrade -r 8.0-RC3` from a 7.2-RELEASE (that has been working flawlessly for the last 30 days or so, except for not detecting the WiFi). The upgrade process seemed to work alright. This was followed by `# freebsd-update install` and a reboot.

Upon booting FreeBSD I get stuck with the exact same "ROOT MOUNT ERROR", as before. When typing "?" in the mountroot-prompt I get completely different labels for the drives than what FreeBSD is trying to boot from.

Changing BIOS settings to USB 1.1 only and SATA to AHCI (as fbsd_fuse suggested) made the keyboard work in the "mountroot"-prompt and also FreeBSD detects the HDD as SATA-150. So that's good news.

Is there a previously known bug related to the "root mount error", or is this only happening to me?
I would hope that these kind of things would be solved for an RC3, but there, sadly, seems to be reasons why the 8.0-trunk is not yet called release.


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## FBSDin20Steps (Nov 22, 2009)

Here is some information about my POV.

Model: http://www.pointofview-online.com/showroom.php?shop_mode=product_detail&product_id=83
Motherboard: http://www.pointofview-online.com/showroom.php?shop_mode=product_detail&product_id=117


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## aragon (Nov 22, 2009)

ajo, that "root mount error" is not a bug.  That's just the kernel telling you it wasn't able to mount the root file system, and I guess that would happen if device entries change.

It would be helpful if you can post a screen shot or dmesg log of the bootup messages.


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## ajo (Nov 22, 2009)

Well I assumed it was to be considered a bug since it worked before and upon updating it didn't.

I don't know how to get a dmesg from the box since I can't boot it (maybe there's some solution to that?). The closest thing I've got is photos taken of the boot process - it didn't catch everything, but hopefully most of it. I've attached them to this post.


What I've tried to do since my last post is to change the 'vfs.boot.mountfrom' from ad4s1a to ad4p1a, and also tried to boot from all ad* options listed in the '?'-command at the mountroot-prompt - and there's only three; ad4p2, ad4p1 and ad4.


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## FBSDin20Steps (Nov 22, 2009)

What are your bios settings?


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## aragon (Nov 22, 2009)

Very strange.  Do you have another FreeBSD system that is working?  I'm thinking it might be easier to just put that drive into another system and label your file systems instead.  Once labeled you can mount them by label name rather than by hardware name.


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## FBSDin20Steps (Nov 23, 2009)

I had similar problems when I tried to install FreeBSD next to Windows on my POV. If your system is dedicated to FreeBSD only. I think, it should give you any problems


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## ajo (Nov 23, 2009)

BIOS settings:
There's too many options to list here. But before booting, when I took the pictures (I've tried "all" sorts of BIOS-settings), I selected "Restore to Safe Settings" in the BIOS and then did the changes suggested by fbsd_fuse - i.e. SATA -> AHCI and disabling USB 2.0.
Is there any particular setting(s) that you'd like to know about?

FreeBSD box:
This is my only FreeBSD box. And I don't have any other (without important data) to test it on. But I could try to see if I could mount the HDD into a Windows box and then write the labels from a PC-BSD VM - but doing that is like asking for more trouble, so only if there's no other choice.

This system is completely dedicated to FreeBSD. Nothing else is on it!


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## FBSDin20Steps (Nov 23, 2009)

I had a look at my bios settings. Here are mine...

```
On chip SATA Type: AHCI
AHCI DID for Linux: Disabled
All USB devices are enabled.
```
I suggest you try with the SATA mode enabled first. See if that works.


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## ajo (Nov 23, 2009)

I've tried with SATA and AHCI. Same boot result, but HDD is run as UDMA33 on SATA and SATA-150 on AHCI.

I find it quite hard to find out what's really wrong. I don't have that much experience of FreeBSD alone, though I have some experience with the userland-kernel glue of Windows and Mac OS X and their kernels.

What I find strange is that it's not possible to enter: ufs:ad4p2a or ufs:/dev/ad4p2 (or with an "a" at the end) in the mountroot-prompt to get it to boot. If the labels are changed from ad4s2a to ad4p2a (?) then one of these should work, right?

The devices are listed in /etc/fstab as ad4s2*, and also the devices get listed as disk0s2* in the boot prompt (by pressing 6 after the boot loader).

I really appreciate all of your help. But it would be even better if I got it to work.
What is the problem with my FreeBSD box? And where has it gone wrong?


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## FBSDin20Steps (Nov 24, 2009)

In addition to Aragons comments... When you were dropped in mountroot. A message told you what slice cannot be mounted. Do you remember what slice that was? The only scenario I can think off. Is that 1 or 2 slices already were screwed before you booted your machine.


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## ajo (Nov 24, 2009)

As you can see in the last "screenshot" it's the ad4s1a that can't be mounted.

The FreeBSD 7.2 that was running before the update worked flawlessly (and was succesfully rebooted a couple of times just before the update) so IF the slices were screwed it happend at freebsd-update install, before last 7.2 reboot.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 24, 2009)

re post # 27 in this thread...
(Not enough /dev entries?)
I found more /dev  entries were shown
if geom_bsd.ko, geom_mbr.ko , and
geom_label.ko were loaded.  (_v8)
Someone might post here on how to load them
at the boot prompt, or if putting them in 
/boot/loader.conf would allow the
boot to proceed from the initial menu...
/edit:/
The "not enough entries" may be related to the problems I had
installing an iso _v8 daily snapshot onto a pci-sata disk. (I
was still running v7, but it might not have mattered, the
CD was running IIRC.) If I had known the syntax below: "load..."
that might have solved it.  (One screen in sysinstall showed no
devices at the top of the screen despite /dev/ad10 or /dev/da10 having
BSD filesystems (165) on it already via the shareware BootIt.).
And to-disk operations errored out with, "no devices found for..."
or something.  Maybe the info in this thread could fix that type
of problem in _8 or _9 if it is not fixed already...


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## ajo (Nov 25, 2009)

@jb_fvwm2:
I tried to start the boot prompt and then performed the following:

`# load /boot/kernel/geom_bsd.ko
load /boot/kernel/geom_mbr.ko
load /boot/kernel/geom_label.ko
boot`

And it works perfectly! =)
I'll see if I can get it into /boot/loader.conf too.

Thank you very much for your help!!

EDIT:
Appending the following to /boot/loader.conf also worked!

...

geom_bsd_load="YES"
geom_mbr_load="YES"
geom_label_load="YES


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## FBSDin20Steps (Nov 25, 2009)

Great news! man :beergrin


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## oliver@ (Dec 23, 2009)

*ASUS AT3N7A-I / 3ware 9500S-4LP*

Hi,

I plan to get a ASUS AT3N7A-I - any experience with this board?
And - did someone ever tried using a 3ware controler with an ION board?
Right now my fileserver runs an old Intel L440GX Server board where the 3ware 9500S-4LP works fine. I planned to upgrade the system with my old desktop equipment (a socket 939 board with an Athlon64 3500+) but the 3ware controller does not work with it. I'm always getting "Waiting for 3ware controller to initialize" on bootup and then the system hangs. The 3ware support just said "your board might just be incompatible" - great response.

I now wonder if I'll face the same error with an ASUS AT3N7A-I and if not how good the hardware support for the rest of the devices is...


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## oliver@ (Jan 11, 2010)

if someone likes pics...

http://pics.pofo.de/gallery/v/misc/fileserver/

Comments welcome


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## nirnr00t (Aug 22, 2010)

Anybody can use ION with nvidia video drivers?


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