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On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 11:22:56AM -0800, Brady Catherman wrote: |
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> About the easiest way to get Linux installed on a headless node |
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> though is to find another PPC system you are willing to spare for a |
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> bit, boot the XServe into Firewire mode, and then install that way. |
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> The Xserve gives you complete access to its internal drive so you |
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> just mount it like normal.. its pretty slick and works really well. |
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Wow, thanks for the information. |
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I was going to go the remote ssh install route but the firewire mode will work |
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great. |
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> Yaboot works great on systems with monitors but fails on headless |
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> nodes. You have to use the serial console to boot the system (open |
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> the serial console, and run "boot hd:,\\yaboot" |
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I'm alittle concerned about the yaboot situation. I'll have to try to get that |
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resolved as this machine is held in a cabinet with others and is acting as a |
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sort of demonstration of Linux stability/reliability. |
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> Apple gets "jumpy" when you tell them that you are thinking about |
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> converting your cluster from Mac OS to Linux =) |
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As they should be. One of the reasons for exploring Gentoo on Xserves is that |
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we've had no shortage of problems with OS X server reliability. I've seen |
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everything from random machine lockups to segfaults when using cp -rp (and |
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slapcat). I'm also alittle troubled by the OS X upgrade process (not to mention |
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the costs). Remote maintenance is also an issue. Its unfortunate that Apple did |
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not provide a better collection of command-line tools (adding users comes to |
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mind). Rant finished. |
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> Either today or tomorrow I should have our final benchmark results |
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> comparing MacOS to Gentoo PPC64 on our 32 node XServe cluster.. |
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> When I get everything up and running I will let you know =) |
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Definitely pass along the benchmarks. I'm fascinating by those sorts of things. |
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I heard some amazing things the other day about PPC64 performance. I also was a |
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bit concerned by that article disclosing MySQL performance problems on OS X. |
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Thanks a lot, |
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Brandon Edens |
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