Got new hardware (DG965WH); yay; doesn’t even boot

Posted by Herman on 18 May, 2007 Leave a comment (25) Go to comments

Since my desktop PC at home was dying I decided to order some new stuff this week. Core components are a Core2 Duo 2,4ghz cpu (yes i know its overkill) with an Intel DG965WH mainboard. I knew that there were some problems with 965 chipsets before but I gambled they would be fixed in Feisty, at least many are.

The funny thing is that the install went like a charm (SATA DVDRW drive) it just finds the harddisk and installs Ubuntu 7.04 on it perfectly. Then reboot…… no bootable devices. I tried things from reinstalling grub on the MBR to playing with the SATA settings in the BIOS (native, legacy, ide, raid, AHCI, etc.). No luck. Left it on AHCI since that is suppose to work best. I also flashed the BIOS to the latest version, no luck either.

I also tried plugging in the IDE disk from my old desktop and using the new sata disk on a spare PCI sata controller. No luck.

I hope someone can fix me up with some tips, else I’ll be stuck on using the desktop-cd. :(

So in the end I’m still stuck with nothing more then the message no bootable devices found. But hey I got a fast machine. I hate computers.

Update: Thanks to some advice in my comments the problem is fixed. It was a really quick and easy fix: you have to mark your partition with the boot flag.

Normally Linux doesn’t need to have its partition marked with the boot flag (windows does), so I didn’t really guess something like this myself. But it seems that the Intel BIOS checks the partition table and only agrees to boot from a disk if a partition is marked with the boot flag.

Now I can really recommend this motherboard, except the little boot flag thingy everything went really smooth and everything seems to work out of the box.

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25 Comments.

  1. Philippe 18 May, 2007 at 18:54

    I think it has to be in relation with the change in naming the hard drives from sdx names to UID.
    Check fstab and grub.

  2. Nico 18 May, 2007 at 18:58

    hu ho…

    I placed the exact same bet as yours. Same motherboard.

    http://www.youplala.net/linux/home-theater-pc/

    The memory has just arrived home, and I was planning the initial install this evening.

    I’ll be watching this space. If I find any good hint, watch mine, or your comments.

    Nico

  3. Herman 18 May, 2007 at 19:20

    Philippe: It doesn’t start grub so the entries in fstab wouldn’t matter.

    Nico: Lets keep each other up to date. :)

  4. David 18 May, 2007 at 19:25

    Hi, I got similar problems with a MSI p965 neo with sata hdd ans ide dvd

    the only way I made it work is the following:

    - connect your hdd in the ICH8 connector (the black one on my mother board)
    - install ubuntu with the alternate cd
    - juste before rebooting, go back and start a shell (hit [CTRL] + [ATL] + 2)
    - $ chroot /target
    - $ mount /media/cdrom
    - return to the install program (hit [CTRL] + [ALT] + 1)
    - install lilo from there
    - reboot..

    et voila

    Hope this help

    David

  6. Weeber 18 May, 2007 at 19:50

    That makes the difference between buy a PC/Laptop Linux capable and not.

  7. Charles H 18 May, 2007 at 21:27

    I have a similar situation, because I have 2 SCSI devices at 0, and the BIOS pointing to boot from SCSI. Actually, it’s Sata and SCSI, but close enough.

    I boot from Ubuntu CD.
    On the first menu, I tell it boot from first hard drive.
    Some random text (errors?) appears for a second, then the system boots from SCSI0 instead of hanging. Hope that helps.

  8. Gez 19 May, 2007 at 2:04

    It happened to me once.
    I found a simple workaround that time: booting with a gparted liveCD (Ubuntu LiveCD, which has gparted should do the work too) and use the “BOOT” flag in the proper partition (the flags option is in the contextual menu accessible with the right mouse button on the selected partition box).
    I applied that flag and rebooted. It went just fine.

  9. Nico 19 May, 2007 at 2:59

    Herman,

    I am in the exact same situation as you are.

    Latest BIOS.
    IDE DVD writer
    SATA HDD

    Perfect Feisty install.

    No bootable device…

    We booth have expensive and fast door-stops!

    Hitting Google.

    Nico

  10. Christian Vogler 19 May, 2007 at 3:24

    I had similar problems with a 975-based mainboard, and man, it drove me nuts. In my case the fix was to run cfdisk on the hard drive and to enable the “bootable” flag on the partition containing /boot (/dev/sda1 in my case).

    Might be worth a shot, even though your hardware is different.

  11. AcidBurn 19 May, 2007 at 4:35

    This is why you need to buy a computer compatible with Linux. 10 minutes on google was all you needed.

  12. Nico 19 May, 2007 at 4:38

    Chris,

    You know what? I was windering about the lack of that flag in the GUI partitioner during the install from the live CD.

    This sound real good.

    Going to try right away.

    Nico

  13. Nico 19 May, 2007 at 4:53

    Doh!

    Oh well…

    Chris’ solution is THE solution.

    Now, I know for a fact that Feisty CDs do normally manage to make a partition bootable.

    What is stopping that thing on those Intel boards?

    BTW, IDE CD drive seems to be working fine.

    Nico

  14. Nico 19 May, 2007 at 4:54

    Herman,

    We jumped the gun and pointed at hardware way too fast.

    This is software.

    Let’s dig into Launchpad and see if this is already there.

    Nico

  15. Nico 19 May, 2007 at 5:13

    In fact, Gez was first with the solution/

    Nico

  16. Herman 19 May, 2007 at 13:45

    I will try to set the bootable flag this afternoon when I picked up my feisty cd from the office. I wonder if its just software. Normally Linux doesn’t need to bootable flag, only windows does. Maybe there is some logic on in the intel bios that checks the partition table, thats the only thing I can think of.

  17. Christian Vogler 19 May, 2007 at 14:19

    Herman, I agree. I wonder why Intel did things that way, because I have another Feisty installation right now where the mainboard boots perfectly fine without a single “bootable” partition on the drives.

  18. Joost 19 May, 2007 at 15:20

    Try ide=nodma at the boot parameters.

  19. Nico 19 May, 2007 at 16:38

    Joost,

    The problem is fixed, without disabling DMA, something I really would not want to do.

    Nico

  21. Herman 19 May, 2007 at 17:49

    I was just about to file it as well. :) Must say I’m quite happy with the board after this little pain. Everything seems to work out of the box. :D

  22. Nico 19 May, 2007 at 18:03

    Indeed, pretty nice hardware, fast and all.

    The PATA/IDE part working is also a good surprise, after all the horror stories I had read on it.

    Now, on to see if the sVDO/ADD2 card is supported properly, using component outputs on my Dell 24″ LCD.

    I have updated my site with the latest developments.

    Nico

  23. Roberto 30 August, 2007 at 5:38

    Did anyone test if Suspend and Hibernate functions work correctly with this board? Thanks

  24. Ian G. 25 September, 2007 at 23:27

    I was wondering if I could get your partition table/harddrive/raid setup? I’ve been getting your EXACT problem, except that my /dev/hda1 boot partition IS set to bootable and still won’t boot. I thought maybe comparing to you could help me figure things out.

  25. Herman 26 September, 2007 at 8:59

    Hi Ian, `fdisk -l` shows:

    Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
    /dev/sdb1 * 1 2432 19535008+ 83 Linux
    /dev/sdb2 2433 2675 1951897+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
    /dev/sdb3 2676 60801 466897095 83 Linux

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