[Bioclusters] Linux on Xserve, anyone?

[Alex Barclay]

Lee,

This might not the best assistance, but Shudong Zhou from Sun has the
steps outlined for modifying elilo for Solaris at
http://blogs.sun.com/szhou/. My initial guess is that elilo offsets
can be calculated for linux rather easily, and a few lines of source
modified.

I don't have access to an xserve otherwise I would try it myself,
however the links might have enough data for your guys to hack
together a solution.

Best wishes,
Alex


On 8/6/07, Lee Watkins <lwatkins at cidr.jhmi.edu> wrote:
> Not much traffic here lately, must be meetings and summer doldrums...
>
> So here's a question to which I can't seem to find an answer:  Has
> anyone successfully installed any version of Linux on the latest
> Intel-based quad-core (2 x dual-core "Woodcrest") Xserve boxes from
> Apple?  I keep hearing/reading that people (somebody, somewhere) have
> done so but can't track down an actual person who has (our Apple
> engineer says the same thing - lots of people who know a friend who's
> done it or heard of somebody who's done it but nobody who can provide
> details).  Not a MacBook or a Mac Pro, but an Xserve. We have a stack of
> these and the programmers around here would just as soon stick with the
> Linux they know and love regardless of how swell OS X is.
>
> People claim that it should be straightforward using elilo (linux boot
> loader) but I have yet to see anyone say "this is exactly how I did it
> and it works on Xserve."  The good folks at Ubuntu say they'd be happy
> to have their engineers help us try make it work - for a price, of
> course.  These Xserves are pretty nice, compact and fairly inexpensive
> servers that could make a decent linux cluster.  More people might buy
> them if they had the flexibility to run linux in addition to OS X, so it
> doesn't seem like Apple's opposed to it, just not doing anything
> actively to help (since they want to push OS X Leopard).
>
> Any leads or actual experiences would be much appreciated. In the
> meantime we've downloaded the beta version of VMWare Fusion to try it
> (since we already use VMWare in various places anyway) and pre-ordered a
> couple copies. At $39, what's not to like, esp. since it claims to
> support the dual-core architecture.
>
> Cheers,
> Lee
>
>
> --
>
> Lee Watkins, Jr.
> Director of Bioinformatics
> Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR)
> Institute of Genetic Medicine
> Johns Hopkins Bayview Research Campus
> 333 Cassell Drive, Triad Bldg. Suite 2000
> Baltimore, MD 21224
>
> lwatkins at jhu.edu | www.cidr.jhmi.edu
> 410-550-7042 ofc | 410-903-2989 urgent_only
>
> _______________________________________________
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>


-- 
Alexander Barclay - Ph.D. Student, Comp Sci
Enterprise Research Group
Center for Information Security
University of Tulsa
---
"Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither"   Benjamin Franklin