EDIT: I upgraded to ubuntu jaunty, and with the new kernel it doesn’t boot anymore, I haven’t figured out the solution or workaround yet (except for using the old kernel). For the love of all that is good, don’t buy this motherboard if you want to run Linux.

I bought a new computer. The mainboard (full name: Asus P5Q3 Deluxe WiFi-AP @n) is very neat, but getting it to work with Linux is a bit of a pain. I’ll put the problems and solutions I find in this blog post, so others won’t have to waste as much time as I’m doing now.

List of issues

1. doesn’t boot [solved]
2. no wireless/WiFi [solved]

List of things that “just work” (with sidux linux)

• ethernet (didn’t try second port yet but it gets listed in menus so…)
• sound

1) Getting the damn thing to boot!

UPDATE! With the current kernel from debian sid (2.6.26-1-686 #1 SMP Sat Oct 18 16:22:25) it can be made to work without special boot options, but with the following BIOS configuration:

Main – storage configuration

• configure SATA as [AHCI]

Advanced – PCIPnP

• plug and play O/S [Yes]

Advanced – CPU configuration

• CPU ratio setting [Auto]
• Max CPUID value limit [Enabled] (Important!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
• Everything else [Enabled]

Advanced – onboard devices configuration

• Marvell IDE [Disabled] (I don’t need it and save a little boot time this way)

Power

• ACPI 2.0 support [Enabled]
• ACPI Apic support [Enabled] (If you still have problems, try setting this to disabled and booting the kernel with the noapic option, that might work)

Tools

• Express Gate [Disabled] (this caused a “BIOS bug #000somenumber” error, and who needs it anyway once you have a working Linux)

The following instructions shouldn’t be necessary anymore:

Add the following to the kernel command line: acpi=off pnpbios=off
This means you will get no cpu frequency scaling, cannot measure the fan speed and temperature, and need to switch off the computer manually.

2) Wireless!

Asus seems to have taken lots of effort to hide what kind of WiFi chip is in this motherboard . A bit of a surprise: the thing is connected to USB. If you read this long after I posted this, it’s probably a good idea to check if you get an identical line (everything to the right of ID, the left part may vary) in the output of lsusb (in a terminal):
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0b05:1742 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. 802.11n Network Adapter

Actually… if you read this sometime far in the future, the driver should come included with the linux kernel, I guess.

UPDATE it seems it is included now (debian sid 2.6.26-1-686 #1 SMP Sat Oct 18) so ignore the parts I striked out if find /lib/modules -name rt2870sta.ko returns a file.

The driver can be found here: http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html , it’s the RT2870USB(RT2870/RT2770). I’m not sure what the RT2870WebUI in the same table cell is, not what you need apparently, so be sure to click the correct link.

Unpack the archive you downloaded (in the terminal: tar xjf thefile.tar.bz2) and enter the newly created directory.

Edit os/linux/config.mk and set both HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT and HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT to y .

Edit Makefile and disable the tftpboot related lines (two sets of five), by inserting #s like this:

#ifeq ($(RT28xx_MODE),AP)
#    cp -f $(RT28xx_DIR)/os/linux/rt$(CHIPSET)ap.o /tftpboot
#else
#    cp -f $(RT28xx_DIR)/os/linux/rt$(CHIPSET)sta.o /tftpboot
#endif

Type make (in the terminal; be sure to be in the directory created while unpacking the archive)

– at this point, make sure you are root –

Copy  RT2870STA.dat to /etc/Wireless/RT2870STA/RT2870STA.dat (I think this is probably unnecessary, but whatever)

Copy os/linux/rt2870sta.ko to /lib/modules/currentlinuxkernelversion/kernel/net/wireless .

Edit /etc/modules and add a line containing rt2870sta .

Run depmod (in a terminal).

Restart the computer. You should now be able to use/configure the wireless network in the usual way.