Cracking ubuntu 8.04 to work with nVidia 8200 chipset motherboard

Upgraded my 2 years old nVidia 6150 motherboard to the new nVidia 8200 motherboard recently.

Using the latest ubuntu 8.04 installation, Hardy Heron's 2.6.24 kernel simply don't work with the new chipset. The basic SATA2 controller, onboard LAN & the onboard 8200 3D chip are all not supported under the 2.6.24 kernel. Although ubuntu 8.04 can be installed with a all_generic_ide option, performance should be degraded substantially & also, no amount of tweaking with the settings can get the onboard LAN & onboard 8200 3D chips to works

The nice surprise is that, Fedora 9's 2.6.25.5 kernel works flawlessly with the new 8200 chispet. SATA2 controller & onboard LAN. The onboard 8200 3D chip requires the latest nVidia 173.14.5 to work though.

It was understood that nvidia 173.14.5 driver will support the 8200 3D chip but will not work with the 2.6.24 kernel in ubuntu 8.04.

So, here is my attempt to install customer kernel in uBuntu to work with my latest motherboard acquisition.

Following the guide from

http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_ubuntu

I've compiled & installed the 2.6.25 kernel in ubuntu.

And with the new kernel , one can finally remove the 'all_generic_ide' option from the kernel option to take advantage of the new SATA2 controller. Edit the grub boot options as follow:

sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

And to install the latest nVidia 173.14.5 driver, one need to boot to native console to install.

In Fedora, one will edit /etc/inittab to change run level from 5 to 3 to boot to native console.

In ubuntu however, one needs to issue

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

then do

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.05-pkg1.run

to install the latest nVidia driver.

Upon reboot. Viola, finally have the nVidia driver working with the 2.6.25 kernel.

Update Jun 10, 2008,

It seemed my custom-compiled kernel has missed out some sound modules & ends up the onboard sound is disabled in ubuntu.

According to the Master Kernel Thread at [url]http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=311158[/url]

Troubleshooting:

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Q. My High Definition sound (Azalia) does not work with the new kernel!:

A. This took me a long time to figure out because I didn't have sound either. You have to enable the Intel HD (Azalia) module in Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, even if it isn't Intel.

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So, after recompiling the kernel enabling Device Driver, Sound, PCI Device, Intel HD Audio option, the sound is ok & the OS is perfect now for my nVidia 8200 chipset motherboard.