[tech] the Xserve

[Mark Glossop]

On 4 Mar 2015, at 22:21, David Adam <zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 4 Mar 2015, James Andrewartha wrote:
>> On Tue, 3 Mar 2015, David Adam wrote:
>> 
>>> Unfortunately it refuses to boot the iMac 10.6 discs (apparently requiring 
>>> 10.6 Server Edition) and AFAICT it's not possible to buy any 10.7 media 
>>> any longer. apparently there is no separate Xserve media for 10.7.
>>> 
>>> If anyone has either 10.6 Xserve or 10.7 installation discs that they 
>>> could provide to UCC we'd like to get an OS X server up and going.
>> 
>> I asked the Apple guy at work, and he said there's no such thing as a 10.7 
>> install disc, but he did lend me a usb spaceman with the installer. I 
>> tried booting, but it got video corruption towards the end.
> 
> Target disc mode might be the way to go then?
> 
> Unfortunately Napoli isn't booting. Again. So we will require someone with 
> a Mac laptop and a Firewire cable - the ones UCC have are all FireWire 400 
> 8-pin to 4-pin, which are enormously unsuitable.
> 
> [DAA]

Xserve1,1 came with 10.4.8 (server), it _should_ boot anything from 10.4.8 Server through 10.7.x. The original install discs of that era were probably "halo" builds of 10.4.8, so they'll only work on the Xserve (and "normal" 10.4.8 builds won't likely include the specific HW support that it needs.) That said, for 10.5 and above, IIRC it doesn't _actually_ need to be Mac OS X Server installed.

(I'm guessing that it won't take anything higher maybe due to it only having a 32-bit EFI? IDK...)

Poking around, I found a 10.5 install DVD, a 6.6GB DVD image (.dmg) for installing 10.6, and the 10.7 Install .app (4.1GB). They should all be hardware-independent installers. No Mac OS X Server installers though #sorrynotsorry.

Let me know if any of the above are of interest. Alternately, there are folks at IS/(ITS/whatever acronym it goes by this week) who may very well have the exact discs you need - I can possibly put you in touch with them if you don't already know who they might be :-)

Cheers,
M.
-- 
Mark Glossop
E: ucc at cueballcentral.com
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