Bill Hung's Linux Server Setup at Home

Video Card Spec

from ATI website.

ATI Radeon X300SE (128MB) PCIe Graphics Card

Models
ATI Radeon X300SE (128MB) PCIe Graphics Card DY596A
Introduction

The ATI Radeon X300SE (128MB) PCIe Graphics Card is a 128 MB graphics accelerator providing a low profile, PCI Express x16-lane graphics add-in card.

The ATI Radeon X300SE (128MB) PCIe graphics accelerator is an ideal solution for those desktop PC customers seeking stable 2D and advanced 3D graphics performance. It is an excellent choice for small business or large enterprise users engaging in video conferencing or 3D image manipulation, while improving the everyday business PC experience with faster frame rates and excellent visual quality.

PCI Express is the next generation I/O bus technology, providing significant enhancements over the existing AGP and PCI standards. The ATI Radeon X300SE (128MB) PCIe Graphics Card deliver superior PCI Express (PCI-E) features including:

* Unprecedented flexibility for new applications and enhanced performance.
* Full 16-lane support with peak bandwidth support which is double the peak performance of AGP 8x.

Key Benefits

* 128MB dedicated on-board graphics frame buffer memory removing the need to share PC system memory.
* Conforms to full PCI Express 1.0A specification for low-profile form factor (x16 lanes native PCI Express implementation).
* Provides either VGA (64 MB) or DVI-I (128 MB), and S-video output ports.
* Full DirectX 9.0 support in hardware for optimal performance in DX9 applications.

Memory Peak memory bandwidth
128 MB DDR1 1.6 GB/s
Compatibility
The ATI Radeon X300SE (128MB) PCIe Graphics Card is compatible with the HP Compaq Business Desktop dx2200 Microtower, dx5150, dx6100 and dx6120 series desktops and dc7100 and dc7600 small form factor and convertible minitowers desktops.

Video Capture Card

LCD TV Display

Power Supply Unit (PSU)

4.Cooler Master Silent Pro M

600 watts, 80 plus bronze energy efficient certified. Modular cables.Single +12V rail for up to 40 Amphere. ATX form factor. Input voltage 90-240V. Input current 10A@115Vac, 5A@230Vac. Input frequency range 47-63Hz. Output capacity 600W. Max output capacity 720W. Fan 135mm. Power Good Signal 100~500ms. Hold Up Time >17ms. Efficiency 85% typically. MTBF >100,000 hours. Protection OVP/UVP/OCP/OPP/OTP/SCP/OLP. Dimension: 150x150x86mm. Operation Temperature 0~40oC. Regulatory NEMKO/TUV/CE/GOST/C-tick/FCC/UL BSMI/CCC. Certification SLI/80 Plus Bronze.
Connectors:
Motherboard 20+4 Pin x 1
CPU 12V 4+4 Pin x 1
PCI-e 6+2 Pin x 2
Peripherial 4 Pin x 5
SATA x 9
Floppy 4 Pin x 1
75.51 pound
[2011-01-23 Bill Hung London]

3. X-Power GTX Light 580W

230V, 50Hz, 10A Input
1 24-pin (20+4) connector
1 4-pin 12V ATX connector
4 4-pin peripheral connecors
3 5-pin SATA connectors
2 6-pin PCI-Express connectors
1 8-pin 12V Adaptor
1 4-pin floppy connector
GBP 29.99
[2009-07-02 London Bill Hung]

2. Antec EarthWatt 380W
ATX 12V v2.0 PSU (Power Supply Unit)
80 PLUS Certified
80mm Low Noise Fan
17 Mar 2007
US$59.99
update on 2009-06-27: don't know what happened this this power supply

1. Thermaltake - killed this PSU on 2009.06.27 in London
Purepower 220W
ATX 12V 2.0
AMD Athlon 65/ Athlon 64FX
Intel Pentium4 Prescott
Universal 24(20) Pin
PCI Express x 1
SATA x 4
12 cm fan, dual +12 Rails
8 4-pin Peripheral Power Connectors
2 4-pin Floppy Drive Connectors
1 4-pin +12V Power Connector
4 5-pin SATA Connectors
1 6-pin PCI Express Connector
1 24-pin Main Connector
3 Mar 2007
US$66.49

2009-06-27

Hard Drives

1. 250 GB Old Seagate PATA hard disk (US$???), this was burned by the power supply  (the thermal take PSU) on 15 Mar 2007
2. 60 GB PATA Maxtor hard disk from garage sale (US$0.50), this was burned by the power supply  (the thermal take PSU) on 15 Mar 2007
3. 300 GB Maxtor SATA hard disk from Fry's (US$89.99). 7200 RPM, 16MB buffer, 1 year warranty, this was also burned by a new power supply  from Fry's and was refunded, 17 Mar 2007
4. 300 GB Maxtor SATA hard disk from Fry's (US$89.99). 7200 RPM, 16MB buffer, 1 year warranty, this was also burned by a new power supply (the antec PSU) from Fry and was refunded, 17 Mar 2007
5. 300 GB Maxtor SATA hard disk from Fry's (US$89.99). 7200 RPM, 16MB buffer, 1 year warranty, this was not working with Fedora Core 6 and was refunded, 18 Mar 2007
6. 200 GB Maxtor SATA, 7200 RPM, don't remember the history of this, 2009-06-27, confirmed disk failure 2009-07-04
7. 320 GB Maxtor SATA, 7200 RPM, don't remember the history of this, 2009-06-27, working well in London 2009-07-04
8. 400 GB Seagate PATA, 7200 RPM, don't remember the history of this, 2009-06-27, confirmed disk failure 2009-07-04
9.320 GB Seagate SATA, 48 GBP, 7200 RPM, 2009-06-27, working well in London 2009-07-04

2009-06-27

Partitions

1. ext3 164GB, main
2. xfs 80GB, media
3. ext3 10GB, root
4. linux-swap 2GB, swap
5. NTSF 32GB
6. FAT32 32GB, 

User Manual

[2009-07-04] Abit AB9 Pro User Manual

Blogs about the project

Shipped the setup to London

[2009-06-27 London]Fedex shipped my server to London, cost almost 300 pounds. There were 3 hard drives in the case, and all of them were loose. The heat sink for the CPU fell off. Upon cleaning and power on with just the motherboard, I managed to kill the thermaltake power supply. Gotta buy another power supply. 

Reading the post from March2007, I can tell my attitude changed. Fedora was just not easy to use enough, and doesn't work out of the box as Ubuntu does. Ubuntu has been very stable across all different versions. The Ubuntu has a new release every April and October, which is quite nice. Ubuntu is the linux OS of choice for me, and I am definitely a convert now. I even met a friend in hostel, and he saw me using Ubuntu on my laptop, and he decided to ditch XP and install only Ubuntu on his laptop after watching me for an hour or so. And I like the whole South African idea of Ubuntu as well, all nice sharing goodness. Bill Hung

Fedora still doesn't work on the server setup; Ubuntu does

[After Mar 2007] Finally identified the server problem was from the intel ICH8R south bridge chipset. Obviously Fedora Core 6 (FC6) with the linux kernel 2.6.18 is not supporting the intel ICH8R south bridge chipset. Therefore, FC6 was unable to be installed onto the SATA hard drive.

The fix was very easy: just ignore the 6 intel SATA ports on the lower right corner and use those (JMicron?) SATA ports between the PCI/PCI-e ports. (There are 9 internal SATA ports and 1 external SATA port (e-SATA) on the Abit AB9 Pro motherboard).

After the hard drive recognition problem was solved, Fedora Core 6 (FC6) installation proceeded. However, the installation encountered another error in the middle of the installation. Fedora Core 6 claimed that the installation disk itself has an error. However, doing a disk integrity on the FC6 installation disk doesn't show any error. And I believe this is a hardware problem, because I was able to install FC6 with another motherboard and CPU before.

Some online article suggested that the 2.6.18 kernel that comes with FC6 doesn't support the Realtek (dual) Gigabit Ethernet chip as well. That means even after I get FC6 working with my motherboard and hard drive, I wouldn't be able to update all the software packages that comes with FC6. I remember FC6 needs to update hundreds of patches right after a fresh installation.

Finally, I gave up and decide to try ubuntu 6.10. Surprisingly, ubuntu recognizes the SATA drive, video card, sound chip, realtek ethernet port, basically everything at the first run. The installation was very quick and very easy. And the default installation can display Japanese and Chinese perfectly, unlike the default installation of Fedora Core 6.

I think ubuntu would be a very lovely OS. But my goal is to build a server, so eventually, I would still want to use FC to be the server OS. Redhat (fedora) is around for a long time, there are many documentations, and all the server applications (DNS and mail server stuff) comes with the package.

Anyway, I will play with ubuntu until the next version of Fedora Core comes out. I don't want to spend time compiling kernels and hunting for drivers so FC6 would work.

At the first glance, ubuntu has many cool applications that come with the package. For example: VLC player and bittorrent client (the official client and Azureus). Also, ubuntu is built from Debian. I have heard Debian is a stable server build as well. After enough testing with ubuntu, I might just stay with ubuntu for the server OS.

This would be the end of the quest to setup a server at home. After this, it would be things I can play with on this server setup. =) Thanks everyone who gave me advices.

Having Fun,

Bill Hung

I burned another hard disk

18 Mar 2007

hi,

After burning the 4th hard drive, I have finally identified the problem: The material that is holding the hard disk is conducting current. Basically I had a short right under the hard drive.

Great, return, return, return, refund, refund, refund. I got more than US$500 back from Fry's for all my returns (over 4 times). Very soon Fry's is going to bad-list me for killing their hard drives and not paying for them.

Anyway, so I decided to bring all my power supply, motherboard, ram, cpu, and video card to fry's. I bought another brand new motherboard (intel) and another hard disk. And I decided to test the system at Fry's service department.

While I was at Fry's setting up the new system, I encountered another problem. The Fedora Core 6 (downloaded on 27 Feb 2007) didn't recognize the SATA chipset (should be intel P965), and the installation of Fedora Core 6 was unsuccessful.

So I talked to the technicians over there at Fry's. They were nice enough to lend me a copy of ubuntu, but ubuntu was unable to load either (stuck on the "uncompressing linux" page). And I also tried to boot with my Knoppix, and Knoppix only gives me a very limited command prompt (no GUI).

At the end of the day, the solution was to return the intel motherboard and the SATA hard disk to Fry's. Then go home and do some research on what chipset driver Fedora Core 6 supports. It seems like the problem now is, the motherboard sees the hard drive, but Fedora Core 6 doesn't know how to deal with the SATA2 hard drive. In the worst case, I would have to use PATA hard disk for this server system...

I have updated the server info here
http://billhung.net/hardware/bill_hung_s_linux_server_setup_at_home.htm

Never ever thought building a server is this difficult. I will continue this quest next weekend.

Bill Hung
 

I burned another hard disk

17 Mar 2007
In an attemp to build a video file server at home, I have already spent close to US$1000 on hardwares (http://www.billhung.net/hardware/bill_hung_s_linux_server_setup_at_home.htm )

For whatever reasons, everything worked one time (I was able to start windows), and then my hard disk started to smoke after couple hours. The aluminum foil under the hard disk was burn and the hard disk had a hole underneath it. Great, now I killed one hard disk.

In order to continue testing the new server setup, I powered off the power supply, and then connected another PATA IDE hard disk to the system. Powering on the system again caused the second hard disk to die... Now 2 hard disks no longer responds to the power supply.

At this point, I suspected the PSU (power supply unit) was defective, so I went to Fry's to buy a new power supply and a new SATA hard disk yesterday night. I tested the new SATA hard disk and new PSU with the server. And then I saw smoke coming out again....

I would go to Fry's to return the burned hard disk. I now suspect the power supply from the power outlet is unstable. I need to find the root cause of the problem.

Never thought building a server system is so difficult.

Ah, I decided to use Fedora Core (Red Hat) for the server OS, and I might use ubuntu as well (as the 2nd server?).

Bill Hung

Returns/Refunds

1.
To Fry's (The one in Arques)
EVGS e-GeForce 7100GS Video Card
US$-68.18
3 Mar 2007

2.
To Fry's (The one in Arques)
AB9 PRO motherboard + 300 GB Maxtor SATA2 Hard Drive
US$-165.62
17 Mar 2007

3.
To Fry's (the one in Campell)
antec power supply (and a Maxtor hard disk is replaced)
US$-64.94
17 Mar 2007

4.
To Fry's (the one in Arques)
AB9 PRO motherboard + 300 GB Maxtor SATA2 Hard Drive
US$-162.35
17 Mar 2007

Reference

How To: Install Fedora Core 6 On Intel DG965SS Motherboard

Posted on Friday 10 November 2006
http://www.blindedbytech.com/2006/11/10/how-to-install-fedora-core-6-on-intel-dg965ss-motherboard/

I decided to take the plunge and start playing around with dual core technology, so I went down to the local store and picked up a new CPU, RAM, and motherboard. However, what I discovered was that it can actually be quite difficult actually installing Linux to what I had purchased, due to the newness of the technology. While support for dual core CPUs has been around for a while, support for some of the more recent motherboards has not, and mine was one of them. So, I could wait for broader support in a few months, or see what I could do now.

First, the reference information — the hardware I used.

* Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6600
* Intel Classic Series Desktop Board DG965SS
* Kingston KVR533D2N4K2/1G (2x 512 MB)
* Western Digital 74 GB SATA Raptor WD740ADFD
* Antec TruePower 2.0 TPII-430
* JVC XJ-HD166S ATAPI DVD-ROM

Live isn’t so live, after all.

My plan was to battle-test this system with a few different Linux distributions, and then transition to testing Windows, but alas — my plans were not to be. I couldn’t even successfully boot up the live CDs I had! I’ve reproduced the error messages below, for the people searching for an answer.

If I tried to boot up Knoppix 5.0 DVD (2006-06-01-EN), I would get this error:

Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press the reset button to quit.

If I tried to boot the Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgy Eft” live CD, I would get this error:

BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1.1.1.3-2ubuntu3) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

If I tried to boot the CentOS 4.4 live CD, I wouldn’t even get an error message — it would just reboot when I tried to select an option.

The interesting thing about the above is that the file system for live CDs largely lives on the CD itself. Hence, if it couldn’t read it as in the above, then for some reason, the DVD drive wasn’t accessible. After doing a little research online, I discovered that the motherboard was relatively new, and did some rather funky things with the handling of the IDE devices. Hence, the computer would start to boot off the optical drive, but when it came time to load up a kernel and actually boot the system, the computer no longer knew how to access the drive! This all resulted from a lack of Linux support for the new motherboard architecture from Intel. Haven’t Linux developers built that time machine yet to get future architectures into old kernels? (Note that Windows would have similar problems; if I didn’t have an up to date Windows install CD or the driver disk, I would be out of luck.)

New hardware? Please stand by, support will be added momentarily…

Linux developers have a reasonably quick turnaround time on these things, and have, in fact, added support to the kernel. Unfortunately, they added it to the most recent kernel — 2.6.18. In CentOS 4.4 (as well as Red Hat Enterprise 4.4), this is 2.6.9-39. In Knoppix 5.0 is 2.6.17. In Ubuntu Edgy Eft, it’s 2.6.17. I would need to wait for the next release before getting support for the 965 chipset. Fortunately for me, Fedora Core 6 was released with the 2.6.18 kernel, meaning that I could use that instead. Being that I didn’t really feel like re-authoring my own custom live CD, I went with that, and will just have to wait for future releases on the others.

The devil is in the details.

I downloaded Fedora Core 6 for x86_64. I’m fairly certain that the i386 version would install in much the same manner, but decided that I might as well use the 64-bit version. I put in the DVD and booted up the computer.

However, it brought up a text-mode window to select language, keyboard, and installation method: something had gone wrong, because in a normal install, the full graphical environment would have been displayed. Upon selecting an installation method of “Local CDROM”, the installer reported the error “No driver found” — looks like I had some work to do.

First, I rebooted and struck F2 to get into the BIOS. Under the “Advanced” tab, “Drive Configuration”, I set “Configure SATA as” to “AHCI”. I then exited, saving changes.

Next, I rebooted with the the install DVD in the drive. When the message came up “To install or upgrade in graphical mode, press the <enter> key.”, I didn’t just hit enter — instead, I typed the following line:

linux all-generic-ide pci=nommconf

This is the magic trick. After skipping the media check, the full graphical environment came up at that point, and I could install as per normal. I did so, and the computer rebooted after installation.

So close, I can taste it!

The computer boots up, and the Internet connection was recognized straight away. The resolution was set to 800×600, so I went to System->Administration->Display, and clicked on the Hardware tab. I changed the monitor to “Generic CRT Display/Monitor 1280×1024″, and then I could set the resolution to (naturally) 1280×1024. System updates worked fine, and programs launched correctly. I could surf the web without issue (except for flash support, which is a whole other problem I won’t address here).

However, there was something wrong…the optical drive no longer worked! I could put in a CD or DVD, and they wouldn’t be recognized by the operating system, despite having worked fine for the install process. The problem here is in GRUB, the Linux bootloader. While the install had correctly added pci=nommconf to the loader, it had neglected to include the all-generic-ide tag.

I edited /etc/grub.conf as root, and changed the line…

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 pci=nommconf rhgb quiet

…to…

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 all-generic-ide pci=nommconf rhgb quiet

I needed to re-install GRUB, with grub-install /dev/sda1. A reboot later, and things worked fine.

Success!

So yes, Virginia, it is possible to install Linux on this wonky motherboard. What’s more, since the support is in the kernel (and far better people than myself are slavishly hacking away at it), it’s quite likely that distributions will support this out of the box in the future without special handling. I haven’t had any issues with this set up yet, and it runs in 64-bit mode to boot.

Some closing thoughts…

* The problems I experienced were largely a result of the IDE channel handling of the chipset. If I had an SATA optical drive, I could probably have gotten up and running on Fedora Core 6 without any extra futzing. This also may have gotten Ubuntu to install as well.
* This also means that if you have, say, ATA drives (not SATA), you may experience a whole host of other problems.
* Ubuntu “Edgy Eft” should have some backports built into it to handle the Intel 965 chipset, however, I couldn’t get them to work. It’s feasible that this CD could boot on an ATAPI optical drive, if given the right options.
* While these problems will probably go away in new releases, it’s not guaranteed. The chipset will at least be better supported.
* I’m not looking forward to the Windows installation. The chipset claims that I should be fine with Windows XP SP2 or Windows Media Center Edition. Only time will tell.
 

Disk I/O problem on Abit AB9 Pro, Core2 system

http://www.webservertalk.com/message1762855.html
General Schvantzkoph
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12-19-06 12:17 AM

I'm having an odd problem with my new Core2 system. The system has an Abit
AB9 Pro motherboard (P965 northbridge, ICH8R southbridge), two Seagate
320G SATA drives, 4G of DDR2.

Each drive has three partitions, two 8G partitions to hold OSes and SWAP,
and 1 large 278G partition that is one half of a software RAID0 partition.
When I do a Verilog regression, which involves lots of writes, on one of
the small partitions the I/O system hangs. I'm still able to ssh into the
machine and I can do some operations that don't involve disk accesses, for
example ls will work on the part of the file system that's in memory but
will stop when it hits a part of the file system that isn't cached. The
hang happens very quickly. When I do the regression on the RAID0 partition
this doesn't seem to happen. Also I've tried this with partitions on both
disks, they both fail identically, so this isn't the result of a broken
disk or a bad cable.

I've run Memtest86+ and the Seagate disk diagnostics and neither found a
problem, although it should be noted that neither of those tools
understands the 965 chipset. I've also switched the BIOS mode for the Intel
SATA controllers from AHCI back to IDE, that didn't make any difference.

I'm using 64 bit Fedora Core 6 with a 2.6.19.1 kernel. The BIOS is the
latest one that ABit has.

This could be a bad motherboard but I suspect that if it were I would have
seen a problem with either Memtest86+, the Seagate diagnostics, the
install and updates, or when I untared my tools which are multiple
gigabytes in size. However none of those had a problem. My suspicion
is that mixing both RAID and non-RAID partitions in the same partition
table is the source of the problem, but I don't why this should be.

Does anyone have any theories? Is anyone seeing anything similar?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Re: Disk I/O problem on Abit AB9 Pro, Core2 system

sndive@gmail.com

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12-20-06 12:18 AM

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> I'm having an odd problem with my new Core2 system. The system has an Abit
> AB9 Pro motherboard (P965 northbridge, ICH8R southbridge), two Seagate
> 320G SATA drives, 4G of DDR2.
>
> Each drive has three partitions, two 8G partitions to hold OSes and SWAP,
> and 1 large 278G partition that is one half of a software RAID0 partition.
> When I do a Verilog regression, which involves lots of writes, on one of
> the small partitions the I/O system hangs. I'm still able to ssh into the
> machine and I can do some operations that don't involve disk accesses, for
> example ls will work on the part of the file system that's in memory but
> will stop when it hits a part of the file system that isn't cached. The
> hang happens very quickly. When I do the regression on the RAID0 partition
> this doesn't seem to happen. Also I've tried this with partitions on both
> disks, they both fail identically, so this isn't the result of a broken
> disk or a bad cable.
>
> I've run Memtest86+ and the Seagate disk diagnostics and neither found a
> problem, although it should be noted that neither of those tools
> understands the 965 chipset. I've also switched the BIOS mode for the Inte
l
> SATA controllers from AHCI back to IDE, that didn't make any difference.
>
> I'm using 64 bit Fedora Core 6 with a 2.6.19.1 kernel. The BIOS is the
> latest one that ABit has.
>
> This could be a bad motherboard but I suspect that if it were I would have
> seen a problem with either Memtest86+, the Seagate diagnostics, the
> install and updates, or when I untared my tools which are multiple
> gigabytes in size. However none of those had a problem. My suspicion
> is that mixing both RAID and non-RAID partitions in the same partition
> table is the source of the problem, but I don't why this should be.
>
> Does anyone have any theories? Is anyone seeing anything similar?

Of the top of my head that sounds like a problem with the ICH8 driver
in the kernel
(or the driver exposes an ICH8 hardware bug).
If you end up getting a real hw raid controller (as a "temporary"
solution) please let us know.
I'd hate to buy more pata drives if I need more space.
Did you post to the kernel mailing list?

I'm seeing some problems with reiserfs in 2.6.18
(and reiserfsck "fixed" the "problem": all the files are in /lost+found
now)
Are you running ext3 or something else? Raw parititions?

I could augment the memtest86 replacement I posted here a while ago
to include hdparm like benchmarking functionality, but destructive
(testing read and write perf).
I suspect kernel developers already have something like that for
testing though.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Re: Disk I/O problem on Abit AB9 Pro, Core2 system

sndive@gmail.com

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12-20-06 12:18 AM

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> I'm having an odd problem with my new Core2 system. The system has an Abit
> AB9 Pro motherboard (P965 northbridge, ICH8R southbridge), two Seagate
> 320G SATA drives, 4G of DDR2.
>
> Each drive has three partitions, two 8G partitions to hold OSes and SWAP,
> and 1 large 278G partition that is one half of a software RAID0 partition.
> When I do a Verilog regression, which involves lots of writes, on one of
> the small partitions the I/O system hangs. I'm still able to ssh into the
> machine and I can do some operations that don't involve disk accesses, for
> example ls will work on the part of the file system that's in memory but
> will stop when it hits a part of the file system that isn't cached. The
> hang happens very quickly. When I do the regression on the RAID0 partition
> this doesn't seem to happen. Also I've tried this with partitions on both
> disks, they both fail identically, so this isn't the result of a broken
> disk or a bad cable.

It occurred to me that it could also be a problem with the sata
circuitry on that disk model.
Could you try a different brand of a hard drives?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Re: Disk I/O problem on Abit AB9 Pro, Core2 system

General Schvantzkoph

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12-20-06 12:18 AM

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:05:31 -0800, sndive wrote:

> General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>
> Of the top of my head that sounds like a problem with the ICH8 driver
> in the kernel
> (or the driver exposes an ICH8 hardware bug).
> If you end up getting a real hw raid controller (as a "temporary"
> solution) please let us know.
> I'd hate to buy more pata drives if I need more space.
> Did you post to the kernel mailing list?
>
> I'm seeing some problems with reiserfs in 2.6.18
> (and reiserfsck "fixed" the "problem": all the files are in /lost+found
> now)
> Are you running ext3 or something else? Raw parititions?
>
> I could augment the memtest86 replacement I posted here a while ago
> to include hdparm like benchmarking functionality, but destructive
> (testing read and write perf).
> I suspect kernel developers already have something like that for
> testing though.

I doubt it's the drives or the ICH8R controller. I've been running Verilog
regressions for the last 24 hours on the soft RAID0 partition and I
haven't had a problem there, in fact last night I had two regression
streams running so both cores were running flat out for about 8 hours.
When I use one of the small non-RAID partitions I get the hang up in under
a minute so it looks like a real bug in the SATA driver.

I'm using EXT3 and Seagate 320G drives. I'm thinking about getting a third
identical drive to use as the non-RAID drive, if I can run on that drive
where there will be no RAID partitions, then that should confirm that the
problem is mixing RAID and non-RAID on the same drive.

BTW if you have a Memtest86 replacement it would be nice if you made it
available, put it on Sourceforge or something. It looks like Memtest86+ has
been abandoned, there haven't been any updates since 2005. 

Other internet article I found to solve my problem

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813127004&SortField=0&SummaryType=ALL&Pagesize=10&Page=2

challenge for Fedora, Ultimately Worthwhile

Pros: Lightning FAST, Stable, Overclockable, Comes with nice toys

Cons: Cutting edge ICH8R chipset betrayed by older Linux distros, weird mobo layout

Other Thoughts: Getting this mobo to run Fedora 6 was a hair-pulling experience. The key: Set the ICH8R SATA controller into "ACHI Mode". Plus, the stock FC6 install would not enable the onboard LAN interfaces (I had to throw in a 10/100 card until I could run pup to get the kernel to 2.6.19-1.2911). But once this was done, I was TOTALLY enthralled with the performance of the board, and the VALUE of this board. You can have your ASUS - this board ROCKS!

http://halisway.blogspot.com/2006/10/running-ubuntu-610-on-abit-ab9.html

Are you using a Abit AB9 motherboard?
If so, make sure you are indeed using the JMicron controller (between the PCI slots, not the six ports to the lower right of the motherboard or the single port).
If you still are getting errors please make sure you disable "Legacy OS USB support" in the BIOS and try running the installer with the irqpoll option.