compatibility between CentOS 7 and Intel C246 chipset

[AleG]

Hello,
I was thinking of installing CentOS 7.9 on a Supermicro 5039MC-H12TRF server.

Has anyone found any issues of compatibility between the Intel C246 chipset and that version of CentOS?

Thank you,
Ale

[jlehtone]

Intel says: C240 Series, formerly "Coffee Lake", launched Q3'18.

I have a board that lspci calls "C620 Series, Sky Lake-E" with Xeon Gold 6230 CPU (released Q2'19)
and a (HP) board that lspci does not have name for, but has Xeon W-1350P CPU (released Q2'21).
Both run CentOS 7 fine. The latter did require network driver from ELRepo for its I219-LM [8086:15f9].
Those should be newer than C240 ? (I have older C220 and C230 too.)

CentOS 7's kernel's changelog does mention the "Coffee Lake" (and I assume both chipset and CPUs):

Code: Select all

$ rpm -q --changelog kernel-3.10.0-1160.71.1.el7 | grep -iE "^\*|coffee" | grep -i -B1 coffee
* Thu May 09 2019 Bruno E. O. Meneguele <bmeneg@redhat.com> [3.10.0-1047.el7]
- [x86] Update stepping values for coffee lake desktop (David Arcari) [1704812]
--
* Thu Mar 21 2019 Bruno E. O. Meneguele <bmeneg@redhat.com> [3.10.0-1030.el7]
- [x86] perf/x86/intel/uncore: Support CoffeeLake 8th CBOX (Jiri Olsa) [1680074]
- [x86] perf/x86/intel/uncore: Add more IMC PCI IDs for KabyLake and CoffeeLake CPUs (Jiri Olsa) [1680074]
--
* Mon Sep 17 2018 Bruno E. O. Meneguele <bmeneg@redhat.com> [3.10.0-951.el7]
- [x86] mark coffeelake-s 8+2 as supported (David Arcari) [1575457]
--
* Wed May 30 2018 Bruno E. O. Meneguele <bmeneg@redhat.com> [3.10.0-896.el7]
- [platform] x86: intel_pmc_core: Special case for Coffeelake (Scott Wood) [1445478]
--
* Fri Feb 09 2018 Bruno E. O. Meneguele <brdeoliv@redhat.com> [3.10.0-849.el7]
- [hid] Add PCI ID for Cannon Lake and Coffee Lake (Brad Peters) [1530141]
--
* Sat Dec 09 2017 Rafael Aquini <aquini@redhat.com> [3.10.0-819.el7]
- [gpu] drm/i915/cfl: Coffee Lake works on Kaby Lake PCH (Rob Clark) [1520639]

Alas, I can't say whether C240 has issues.

[TrevorH]

Support added in 2018 and the last CentOS 7 release in 2020 so I think it should be OK.

[BShT]

why 7? we are at 9...

[AleG]

My mistake, I meant a Supermicro SYS-530MT-H12TRF server, with an Intel C256 chipset.

Maybe I should create another topic -_-

[TrevorH]

Since the date on that Intel chipset is listed as Q3 2021 on ark.intel.com and the latest and last installation media for CentOS 7 is dated September 2020, I do not hold out much hope of that working. It might. I wouldn't bet on it.

[AleG]

Since the date on that Intel chipset is listed as Q3 2021 on ark.intel.com and the latest and last installation media for CentOS 7 is dated September 2020, I do not hold out much hope of that working. It might. I wouldn't bet on it.

Do you think that it wouldn't install and/or boot at all, or that it would but with some missing functionalities?
Is there any way to know without trying first?

Thank you

[jlehtone]

The kernel changelog does not contain "tiger". (Then again, neither does that of EL9.) Kernel of EL8 said "initial support for Tiger Lake" in Wed Oct 09 2019 [4.18.0-147.6.el8].

Even if it would apparently work, "partial" and "almost" are an awful limbo to be in. (Ask any laptop that "almost" has network.)

BShT did ask: Why EL7?
You could install EL8 or EL9.

[TrevorH]

Do you think that it wouldn't install and/or boot at all, or that it would but with some missing functionalities?

Yes. One of those. Or it might work perfectly, who knows without trying. But an operating system boot iso created about a year before the hardware was made public stands a good chance of requiring an update to the drivers to support hardware that didn't exist at the time it was built. It might all work, it might boot but be missing e.g the network card, or it might crash on boot.