Odd - diskless setup failed, detected via epia EX 10000 as "fiire station"

[archonix]

Ok so maybe the fiire station has an epia board in it or something, I don't know, but this is frustrating the hell out of me right now. I tried netboot, got the error, and checked in the device manager to see this "fiire station" thing listed where I thought I'd see "generic pc as md" or something similar. It fails every time it tries to detect, with the same error.

At one point I got so frustrated I sat and watched the files it was creating for the network image. It went fine for a while, made an "ubuntu" directory and started populating it. Then at the last moment it deleted all that and created a virtually empty "debian" directory before failing.

I just tried doing a disk-based setup to see if that was a way around it and got the same, exact same error. Any suggestions? For starters, is there a log file that might tell me what's going on beyond simply nd rather pointlessly repeating "diskless setup has failed"?

Why is it detected badly and screwing up like this? It's worked fine with a couple of test machines. This little box was meant to be the nice quiet media director in the corner and I bought this via board because I had the impression that LinuxMCE would work with it. Was I wrong?

[totallymaxed]

Ok so maybe the fiire station has an epia board in it or something, I don't know, but this is frustrating the hell out of me right now. I tried netboot, got the error, and checked in the device manager to see this "fiire station" thing listed where I thought I'd see "generic pc as md" or something similar. It fails every time it tries to detect, with the same error.

At one point I got so frustrated I sat and watched the files it was creating for the network image. It went fine for a while, made an "ubuntu" directory and started populating it. Then at the last moment it deleted all that and created a virtually empty "debian" directory before failing.

I just tried doing a disk-based setup to see if that was a way around it and got the same, exact same error. Any suggestions? For starters, is there a log file that might tell me what's going on beyond simply nd rather pointlessly repeating "diskless setup has failed"?

Why is it detected badly and screwing up like this? It's worked fine with a couple of test machines. This little box was meant to be the nice quiet media director in the corner and I bought this via board because I had the impression that LinuxMCE would work with it. Was I wrong?

Hmmm... well I'm afraid if you search this forum for threads relating to EPIA or Via you will very quickly see that NO Via based machines are currently supported due to graphics driver issues.

The original Fiire Boxes were based on Via GPU's and under 704 they had some special binary drivers supplied by Via but these are not available for the 710 kernels and have never been updated.

So I am afraid currently your Via machine is not compatible with LinuxMCE and no one can say with any surety when this situation might be resolved. If your looking for fanless or close to silent MD's then the ATOM based motherboards look promising or for pre-built hardware look at the ASUS Eee Box (see other threads here on the Forum).

All the best

Andrew

[archonix]

Well, poop. I guess I'll have to shell out the extra for a new motherboard.

[richard.e.morton]

this seems to contradict the wiki...
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/VIA_EPIA_Mini-ITX

[archonix]

Ok so... I don't know what I did, but it seems to be half working now. This time I'm getting an error that says "failed to setup X".

[Zaerc]

In a nutshell: set it up manually as i386 in the web-admin, install the unichrome or openchrome drivers manually and stick to UI1.

[totallymaxed]

this seems to contradict the wiki...
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/VIA_EPIA_Mini-ITX

Yep that page is out of date... I've updated it with a warning. As Zaerc says earlier in this thread the Via's GPU's will handle UI1 ok (but you will need to build your own OpenChrome oe Unichrome drivers).

On the other hand the new ATOM based machines like the ASUS Eee Box and other built around the Intel i945GCLF motherboard offer a good alternative (especially the ASUS... comes complete with a VESA mounting kit).

All the best

Andrew

[archonix]

Yeah, I think I'll buy an atom-based board and keep this one aside as a low-power desktop machine instead. Kubuntu 8 workes on it absolutely fine, which is really... frustrating.

Thanks for the help, guys.

[archonix]

Ok since this is marginally related...

I'm looking at a nice Intel atom board with a realtek sound chip. It has that "jack detect" stuff to let it do 5.1 sound or something to that effect. Now, I haven't been able to find any information about this so, what's the reliability of the realtek drivers for this feature in LinuxMCE?

[richard.e.morton]

this seems to contradict the wiki...
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/VIA_EPIA_Mini-ITX

Yep that page is out of date... I've updated it with a warning. As Zaerc says earlier in this thread the Via's GPU's will handle UI1 ok (but you will need to build your own OpenChrome oe Unichrome drivers).

On the other hand the new ATOM based machines like the ASUS Eee Box and other built around the Intel i945GCLF motherboard offer a good alternative (especially the ASUS... comes complete with a VESA mounting kit).

All the best

Andrew

Well that's more than a little frustrating as I am building my system currently... I have just bought an SP-13000 which isn't now going to work... arrrggghhhh

R

[totallymaxed]

Ok since this is marginally related...

I'm looking at a nice Intel atom board with a realtek sound chip. It has that "jack detect" stuff to let it do 5.1 sound or something to that effect. Now, I haven't been able to find any information about this so, what's the reliability of the realtek drivers for this feature in LinuxMCE?

The ASUS Eee Box has a multi-port jack for all audio-out on the rear of the unit (also has stereo in/out at front for headphones etc under front flap) and it comes with an SPDIF adapter jack that gets optical out. The same socket also accepts a stereo jack. We have got the SPDIF working fine but have yet to get stereo out of the port (but I am certain we will). So I dont think there are any issues with the sound drivers on this machine... apart from the Stereo issue just mentioned.

All the best

Andrew