amd64 mainboard compatibility list

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 03:13:20PM +0300, Andriy Gapon wrote:
> on 25/06/2010 08:26 Charles Sprickman said the following:
> > While trying to find how not to get burned like we did with some older
> > oddball Supermicro boards, I came across this page:
> > 
> > http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64/motherboards.html
> > 
> > There is a request up top for new submissions (there are no 8.x
> > entries), is feedback still wanted?  If so, I've got a number of "bad"
> > boards to add.
> 
> It seems that the list is very outdated and not actively maintained.

Bummer.

> > I cannot stress enough how great it would be if this were updated.  I'm
> > server shopping at the moment and after running into various SMP and
> > ACPI issues on some SM boards, I'm quite nervous about committing to any
> > particular model or brand.
> 
> Nowadays it is generally expected that any amd64 system should just work.  Well,
> that should be "almost any", or "typical".  There is nothing special about amd64
> anymore.  In certain aspects it's even "better" than i386.  So, if something
> doesn't properly work, then it's "just" a bug that should be appropriately reported.

FWIW, I agree with Andriy.

If there's a specific model or series of Supermicro boards which are
experiencing SMP or ACPI problems, reporting them officially (either via
a PR or here on the appropriate mailing lists) would be highly
beneficial.  If the issues are FreeBSD-related ("7.x works fine, 8.x
doesn't!") then I'm sure we can find the correct resources to track down
the problem.

Also, if the issues turn out to be ACPI-table-related, reporting the
issue to Supermicro (and involving them in the debugging and assistance
process) would be equally as beneficial.  I do have some contacts at
Supermicro who handle BIOS issues.  I'll follow this thread closely and
reach out to them if need be.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |