[OpenIndiana-discuss] How to replace a motherboard without reinstalling OpenIndiana

[Robin Axelsson]

I won't be using the Marvel controller anyway, and both Realtek network 
ports work just fine on my current system with no stability issues. It's 
not the first time I'm buying the Gigabyte GA-990FX-UD7 motherboard and 
I have had no problems whatsoever with fitting an Intel EXPI9400PT card 
in it. This network card is not meant to replace anything, this 
motherboard has only one ethernet port (whereas my current motherboard 
has two) and I need two of them.

To put it short; all the hardware I'm interested in using on the new 
motherboard is essentially the same as the hardware on the old one 
(except the north and southbridge, but I don't think OI would have any 
more issues with running on the new 990FX chipset than the old one).

The problem is that the hardware on the new motherboard will most likely 
be located on PCI addresses that are different from the old one (with 
the possible exception of the GPU and the NB). From my experience, the 
installed drivers on OI will not be happy about it so my question is how 
can I reconfigure the drivers so that they use the pci addresses on the 
new motherboard?


On 2011-09-10 02:56, Lou Picciano wrote:
> Robin,
>
> Apart from issues of reinstalling Oi - which will be of some significant concern - I can relate from experience some of what you should expect from the GigaByte board; we are GB users ourselves - running Oi right now on GA-P67A-UD7-B3 mobos.
>
> First, you won't get good (any!) mileage from the Marvel SATA controllers on Oi - they are unsupported.
>
> In addition, some have told us to avoid the RealTek Gigabit enet chips as well - though we haven't had probs there with latest revs of Oi.
>
> Last, have also purchased Intel NIC card replacement for use in (one of) these mobos, but find that it won't fit in the crazily-designed PCIE slot, given clearances against the GigaByte 'Ultra Durable' (but ultra in-the-way!) heatsinks.
>
> Having said all that, we have reliable, screaming fast installations of Oi based on that GB board - overall, happy!
>
> Lou Picciano
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robin Axelsson"<gu99roax at student.chalmers.se>
> To: "Discussion list for OpenIndiana"<openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 9, 2011 6:30:10 PM
> Subject: [OpenIndiana-discuss] How to replace a motherboard without reinstalling OpenIndiana
>
> Hi,
> I wonder how I can make an existing installation of OI work on a new
> motherboard. From my past experience the operating system stopped
> working when I replaced the motherboard so I had to reinstall it. I
> think the reason why is because the new motherboard have different IRQ
> mappings even though they had a lot of the hardware in common, which
> results in the drivers not finding the hardware on the new motherboard.
>
> So my question is how can I manually reallocate the drivers or make the
> the system automatically reconfigure the drivers to the new hardware
> configuration? I have put a considerable amount of time configuring the
> old system so I would very much like to not have to get through the
> hassle of reinstalling the system and redoing everything again.
>
> If my RMA will be successful I will swap my old MSI 790FX-GD70 with a
> Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7. This motherboard has only one Realtek RTL8111E
> controller whereas the old one has two RTL8111DL controllers. So I'm
> considering throwing in an extra Intel EXPI9400PT controller to get two
> ports like the old one (I have dedicated the other port for virtual
> machines).
>
> The other difference is that Gigabyte has ditched the JMicron
> controller/extender combo (for OnBoard SATA, and good riddance it is!)
> for two Marvell 88SE9172 but I won't be using that anyway. So other than
> that and the newer NB/SB they feature essentially the same hardware
> components.
>
> Kind Regards
> - Robin.
>
>
>
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