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[GUIDE] Snow Leopard on HP ProLiant Microserver N36L (AMD)


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A while back I had time sync issues on SL and I have the same thing on Mavericks

 

If I have the "sync time " selected to European time, my MicroServer loses time until I go back into the Date &Time Preferences (and then TAB) and suddenly the time fixes itself.

 

Is anyone else getting this ?

 

Does anyone know who to work around it ?

 

I seem to recall creating a program using automator that updated the time every hour, I will see if I can trace my steps !

 

Cheers

 

TK

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Tahir,

 

I've not had any issues with either of my Microservers losing time.

 

Have a look at this web page http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/115671/how-can-i-keep-my-system-clock-in-sync-under-mavericks the question isn't as uncommon as you might think.

 

Setting a number of time servers seems to have fixed the issue for the opening question.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Ed

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  • 2 weeks later...

Can someone help me out please,

 

I've googled for England, but can't figure how to make a CD which boots and runs Cameleon-2.2svn-r2377.pkg

 

This is because, if I (accidently) knacker Niresh's bootloader, the only way I can get it back is by booting another mac, attaching my system disk to it's usb (with connectors and wires everywhere) and then run the pkg to install on the original disk.

 

When I had Snow Leopard, I just downloaded and burnt the Chameleon ISO file, but there doesn't seem to be one for the version I need (see top of my post)

 

Any help / pointers appreciated.

 

Thanks very much !

 

TK

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  • 3 weeks later...

Incorrect Time - Workaround

 

Hi all, i've been really struggling with my system time ever since going to 10.9.4 (Mavericks) on my N36L

It was so bad that I was losing about 4 hours in 24 !

 

So I've made a bit of an ugly workaround:-

 

1. I found the command to update the time from Terminal from the command line, then I managed to do it without asking for the password, separately

    "echo YOURPASSWORD | sudo -S ntpdate -u uk.pool.ntp.org"

- Obviously you need to enter your password to get it to work without further prompts.

 

2. The next thing I did was to create a shell script in Automator (New workflow) using this Shell: /Bin/Bash (from the dropdown) and then echo YOURPASSWORD | sudo -S ntpdate -u uk.pool.ntp.org
exit

3. I saved it as an app. Now I could run the app and it would fix the time, without promting for username or password. Admittedly, you could find out my password (not great) if you looked inside this file.

 

4. Lastly, I downloaded a free scheduling program from here  http://www.macscheduler.net/ and set it to run the time fix app I created every 15 mins.

 

I'm sure there are better ways to do this (much better ways) but at least I have found a workaround and have fixed the incorrect time issue ..

 

If anyone knows a better way, then I am all ears .. just thought I'd share what I learned and I need to make this solution more secure !!

 

Cheers

 

TK :-)

 

Notice I had to enter my password

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  • 4 weeks later...

Apologies - I know this is a bit of an old thread, but once I've got 10.9.0 installed on my N40L, what is the next supported update and which kernel are people using?

I am trying to set up OS X Server on as new a version as I can. 10.9.0 worked well for me so I went and got a graphics card since the on-board was really not working out, especially when screen sharing. The best I could come up with was a fan cooled Nvidia G210 (Asus). This works well but the fan is on 100% all the time.

 

I'm pretty sure it won't make any difference, but before I get my soldering iron out and make up a manual controller for the fan (since it will just sit there headless all day long), I wan to try the Nvidia Web Drivers just in case they support the card and the fan. I mistakingly updated to 10.9.5 and can no longer get anything to boot and I think it is because the 10.9.4 kernel I downloaded isn't properly supporting 10.9.5

 

Before I give up, I am going to wipe and go back to 10.9.0 again and would like another crack at it.

Just so people know, my main desktop machine has been an Intel Hackintosh since around early 2009 so I'm pretty familiar with everything, but it all does rather just work on that one [:)] I also have a 2013 Mac Book Air I can use too.

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Try the BSA kernel v9 on the Microserver.

 

10.9.4 works fine on the HP Microserver, 10.9.5 doesn't seem to play well using the above kernel.  I think the AMD kernel is the cause of the problem with 10.9.5, as each time I have tried to upgrade to 10.9.5 I have ended up with an unbootable system and have to revert to one of my clones. 

 

Check out post 194 onwards on page 10, as this may help/explain what is required when installing and then upgrading to a newer version of Mavericks.  I now choose to create a bootable clone of my working systems; upgrade my main install on an SSD, and use the clone to undertake any kext changes, tweaks or as a last resort to revert to my last working install, I don't upgrade the clone to the new version till everything is working as expected and the new system boots without a KP or any other error.

 

Basically when you upgrade from 10.9.0 to 10.9.4, you need replace the new Sandbox and System kexts with earlier versions from 10.9.0 or 10.9.1, otherwise you get a KP/error and can't boot in to OSX.

 

With regards graphics cards the norm seems to be to use an AMD/ATI HD5450 or 6450 low profile fanless card with the Microserver, as these have smaller heatsinks and the lack of a fan keeps them quite.  The low profile NVidia cards tend to have overlarge heatsinks when fanless, and if fitted with a fan they reverberate within the case, as they are very close to the side of the case.

 

Good luck.

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Thanks for the info!

My efforts this week have been a right old trial !!

To try and briefly summarise, first of all I'm doing this all on my old N40L which is relegated to just being a workshop PC (ever tried selling a Microserver :P) This is a dry run before converting my main N54L to OS X from Windows Server 2012. I want to do that as I want to try out OS X Server App for DHCP, DNS, File sharing between Apples and so on (all in a home environment), but my N54L has 1x250GB and 3x2TB drives in it, the 2TB's being a RAID5 and I don't really fancy backing up and rebuilding that raid unless I know this is going to be a worker, obviously.

So, my Asus G210 GPU is a disaster. You cannot control the fan full stop. Not in OS X, not in Windows. Had I known that I'd not have bought it. So today we are going on another 50 mile round trip to swap it out for the Asus 5450 fanless instead! That one doesn't come with a low profile bracket but ultimately the server will run headless so frankly I don't care too much wether it has a bracket attached or not. Won't be the first time I've done that in machines.

SO, with the G210 I managed to upgrade to 10.9.3 OK but because of the mass of fan noise I took the 210 out. Then I spent all of one night trying to get past PCI Root Configuration and try as I might I simply couldn't. But it wasn't hung there, the system was up and I could screen share to it and ssh to it quite happily which was fortunate. In the end I have concluded that 10.9.3 brought further frame buffer changes and it no longer supports the VGA port of the built in 4200 card. So I figured I'd have a crack at extracting the VBIOS and getting the frame buffer and ports working. Sadly I didn't get past the first hurdle as GPU-z point blank refused to extract the VBIOS. Apparently you can't on a mobile / integrated GPU.

So bottom line is, anything above 10.9.2 no longer supports the internal GPU on a micro server N36/40/54L. Anything above 10.9.4 no longer supports the machines at all. Which is a bit sad really as there's simply nothing quite like these on the market still. Apple have just released the source for 10.10 so I guess it's possible a 10.10 AMD kernel may end up getting spun but we're in a waiting game at the moment and I really wouldn't know how to cross compile for AMD from Intel and I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to give up a chunk of life to that yet. I guess I could have a go from the 10.9.4 micro server when it's up and running.

My plan then is to go and swap out the G210 for an HD5450 today and then get the N40L up and running under 10.9.3 finally. I may go to 10.9.4 but there's not a huge amount of point. I was only really upgrading since the Nvidia web drivers only worked on 10.9.3+ Then I shall install server and have a play, see how it behaves and if it will fit my needs etc. Then finally if we get there OK then I'll go buy an additional 2TB internal drive for the N50L so I can backup the raid, and repeat the whole process for live giving me a dual boot OS X / Windows Server 2012 setup.

 

Finally, next year when money is a bit less tight I'll probably retire the N40L completely, make the N54L the workshop desktop and shuffle my current i7 desktop to be my server, building a new gaming desktop as my current one is 4+ years old now (must be an early i7 i guess, it's before they had fancy names). Phew! My only concern there is power consumption. Need to make some measurements, analyse it a bit and have a think!

Why does everything happen at once incidentally. Came downstairs this morning, switched my gaming PCs monitor on and was just greet with some rather un-impressive cracking and popping noise from the PSU :( Really can't afford the monitor that I would like to buy to replace it right now. Oh well.

[EDIT] Guess that wasn't so brief !!

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OK, wasn't able to get BSA Kernel v9 to work for me it got so far through the boot and just stopped. The system was still up as it gave a message when I plugged a USB stick in but other than that I could do nothing other than power off. There was no real clue as to where it had stopped in the console output.

 

I'm up and running using Niresh 10.9.x v2.3 kernel that I found somewhere but my dmesg is full of "opemu err: no rip yet" messages. I understand that should be related to the system.kext (and sandbox.kext?) versions but so far i've had no luck clearing it out regardless of which system.kext's i roll back to.

 

OS X Server was a different matter entirely. There's simply no way to legally get hold of it. It does still exist in the app store for 10.9 but you have to find an external link to it but the only version Apple still have available is 3.2.1 which requires 10.9.5, so you guessed it, we're out of luck.

 

iCloud is obviously borked, but other than that it's quite good. I think ultimately this won't be a good long term thing though because of the AMD kernel. Shame really.

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What boot flags did you use with the AMD kernel?  Try the following -v, -f, GraphicsEnabler=Yes, ncpi=0x2000, PCIRootUID=1 or a combination of these.  You should at least be able to see where the installation is halting using the -v flag.

 

Also if the BSA kernel isn't named 'mach_kernel' you may have to specify the name of the AMD kernel.  You may also need to replace the 'System.kext' on the USB installation drive with the kext that came with the BSA kernel for Mavericks to load.

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Ah, I probably should have qualified the issue :)

 

The install isn't hanging, it's working fine using Niresh kernel v2.3, it's running as my day-to-day server now but there's still a large amount of opemu errors coming through. Once the network driver must have crash as well or something because it was flooding the logs with messages about having run out of available frame segments. I had a nose at the source for that one and decided to adjust my MTU slightly. That hasn't happened since but I'm keeping an eye on it.

 

When I tried the BSA kernel I can't really remember where the boot got but I had tried all of those flags (all but the -f are in my boot plist anyway) and the kernel was already called 'mach_kernel'. Not sure at the moment what to do. I'm very tempted to buy a baseline Mac mini but the cost of a decent thunderbolt attached storage array is just insane!

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  • 2 months later...

Hey!

 

Been a while! I finally found the time to put Mavericks on. Managed to get it on. Using the integrated graphics so resolution is stuck at 1024x768! 

 

Question: Has anyone tried Screen Sharing to the server? I use the server headless so when screen sharing into it from my MacBook, it's horribly slow. Unusable and ends up crashing. Doesn't work at all in adaptive quality. Has to be on full quality. Just wondered if anyone else has tried it/could try it and get back to me with results?

 

Think its something to do with the kernel. Unfortunately, having to stick with Snow Leopard until I can sort this out!

 

Saf :)

 

EDIT: I'd like to know how it works for people with a GPU in there server and because I'm using the internal one! But any experiences with screen sharing on mavericks welcome  :)

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You won't get it to work on internal graphics I'm afraid. The experience will always be what you are experiencing now. I tried for quite some time to get a better experience with the internal GPU, even trying to patch / compile (whatever is was) the ATI Radeon FrameBuffer driver but I simply couldn't. In the end I caved in and bought a graphics card. It might say in this thread which one but without going and looking I can't remember.

Ultimately, my machine is working nicely apart from iCloud doesn't work - and I think I'm right in saying it will never work on this AMD machine, and also the network driver ends up in a state it's discarding frames and spews masses of debug messages to the log console, sometimes to the point of not being able to remote in. My server is in a building about 120' away from the house so I end up having to take a walk of shame to reboot it when this happens. Bit of a pain in the arse to be fair.

 

The screen sharing works pretty well with the added ATI graphics card. However I think it's one of the things that triggers the networking issue so most of the time I try to connect over SSH.

Ultimately, I'm looking into replacing the microserver with an entry level Mac Mini but cost is the problem. I need to attach a 4 disk array to it and that's a lot of money over USB3 or Thunderbolt. But I can't bring myself to go back to Windows Server 2012, so for now I'm just putting it off!


Oh, Niresh has brought out a 10.10 now. I've no idea if that works on these or if things like iCloud have been fixed. I'm not brave enough to try even though I do have two Microservers!

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  • 2 months later...

Hi Guys, it's been quite some time since I came back, to thank Janitor way back in late 2013.

 

I can see that things have moved on & there are a load of new posts to get through. I started tonight but realised I need to set aside some time to do it properly.

 

Like others, I have 2 Microservers a '36 and a '40. The '36 is still successfully running SL and has been a server & occasional Internet / light use machine.

 

I'm starting to have Safari crash problems with some sites, so came back to see what was what. The '40 is on Win 8, not 8.1 as I've not yet got around to upgrading the BIOS to fix the ethernet issue.

 

I'm now thinking of maybe upgrading the '36 and the '40 to Mavericks or even Yosemite, but given the slow processors I'm not sure which is the 'lightest' OS?

 

As I say, I'll read all the new posts in order soon, but I just wanted to reply to Saf and martinW above re the screen resolution.

 

I can say that on my '36 with no additional graphics card I can get 1680 x 1050 about 50% of the time on a reboot. When it 'fails' it gives 1440 x 1050 - I used to reboot at that point until I got the 1680 x 1050 but after a while i decided 1440 x 1050 was fine for the 50% of the time it happened. 

 

I'm not sure what I did in detail to get those results as it's been a few years now, but I remember trying all of the steps in those early posts. I think there's a good chance it's related to having a screen attached to the VGA port on boot. I have an old dell 1680x1050 screen plugged in and it's a much nicer res to remote in at as well.

 

If you don't have a screen, there is something that may help - note not tried it just a thought. There's a way to 'fool' a mac mini to display higher resolutions when remoting in.

 

It's something to do with soldering a resistor across 2 pins in a spare vga connector. Then the mini thinks it has a screen plugged in and allows higher res settings.

 

Google may find it - try mac mini server screen resolution fix or somehitng similar.

 

Good to be back :-)

 

Edit

To say that my above screen sharing/1680 x 1050 on internal vga is on snow leopard, so probably not relevant to what Saf/martinW were saying

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This is quite well timed really, I just spent the weekend wiping my N54 Microserver of OS X  and putting OpenMediaVault on instead  ^_^

 

It was OK(ish) when it was running. I got round my screen problems with an Asus 5450 Passively cooled graphics card, although that was nice and toasty when I took it out last night!! But the setup was just too flakey in the end. iCloud didn't work and my understanding is that it will never work for AMD processor based hacks on Mavericks so that meant that a few of the things I wanted were never going to work properly. It also meant I got nagged about software updates every time I logged in. However the biggest problem was the network card. The best driver I could find for it would periodically and without any real explanation that I could see stop responding. I forget exactly what the error messages were but the bottom line was that at best network access would grind to a crawl but more normally, it would just drop off the face of the network.

 

Now, this wasn't too big of a deal as it you left it alone it generally carried on working. The problem was when you wanted to log into it via VNC or Screen Share to actually do something. I was never able to find a resolution to this. I did download the source code for the driver and was going to try and do something about it but I have far too many other projects on the go. Sadly, the one thing I need a server to be with all my data on it is reliable so it's had to go.

Shame. Sad thing is, if Apple sold something appropriate then I'd be all over it, but they don't any more. I could buy a Mac Mini but I'm doubtful if that is really designed to run 24/7 and where would I plug my 4 SATA drives? When you start to look at USB3 enclosures the price of that plus the mini just escalates to the point it's ridiculous and something like a Sinology would be more appropriate. I doubt even one of the old X-Serve's (when they were available) would have cut it either as I bet they sounded like a typical rack mount based jet engine  :hysterical: 

 

Same with my gaming PC really, if Apple did the Mac Pro with gaming graphics cards in them then i'd be there (though they may need to add a reasonable size internal drive too). At least for now I can use Yosemite on my PC for that (and have had OS X on it for around 6 years now).

So, for now, it's been a nice adventure but the adventure ends for me. I do still have Mavericks installed on my old N40 which is my electronics repair workbench PC now. I might try Yosemite on that and see if it's any better but the CPU is getting a bit long in the tooth and I fear with that one, since I don't need any raid or anything I could be better off with a small Mac Mini. It mostly all just comes down to money all the time.

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I'm wondering if any others experienced the VNC/Screen Share issues that martinW did?

 

If you did, any steer on a fix?

 

Not sure i'll go to Mavericks, if remote access causes those kinds of problems. Things to think about...

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  • 2 weeks later...

If AMD is an issue, then the HP Gen8 Microserver might be a cheap alternative and has a socketed cpu so that you could upgrade the Celeron processor to something beefier if required. It has a dual Gigabit network card integrated but I am not sure what the chipset is or if it can be made to work under OSX.

 

As it is Intel based, current difficulties such as iCloud support should be simpler to overcome.

 

Currently going for about £120 in the UK after cashback it might be a worthwhile upgrade for some.

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Hi Splonk,

 

As I have 2 of the older AMD Gen 7's I'm keen to continue using them. One is a Windows 8 machine thats not used a great deal, but is there if a backup Windows desktop is needed by anyone.

 

The other is Snow Leopard and is used much more often, esp with remote access from other Macs.

 

Seems I have 3 options for the Snow Leopard box;

 

1. Continue on SL - Works well and my previous browser issues have settled, so I'm putting that down to simply too many tabs/windows. Longer term I'm concerned about interworking with up to date Macs - Yosemite and beyond.

2. Go to Mavericks - not realistic with the remote access issues.

3. Look at another OS - Windows or Linux. Am open minded here, but either option is additional complexity of running 2 OS's and tbh doesn't really appeal.

 

So I'll likely stick with SL, but check back here occasionally to see if other Mavericks installed Gen 7s have similar issues to Martin or not and if they have, how have have solved them.

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Splonk,

 

I believe the HP Gen8 Microserver has an Intel 6/C200 Series chipset (that's what is shown on my WS2012 box under device manager).

 

I tried installing Mavericks on mine but had to stop after a few failed attempts, as my Gen7 work server was failing (fan and HD issues) and I had to quickly get WS2012 r2 Essentials on the Gen8.

 

The Gen8 is my least favourite Microserver, as I don't like HP's intelligent provisioning software.

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  • 2 months later...

Never use screen sharing much but it works ok on my N36L (mavericks 10.9.4) machine I have an Asus 6450 graphics card installed in the server. I've not suffered any network issues or lockups.  The Microserver runs headless as a media server and time machine backup.  iCloud & iMessage not working due to AMD cpu.  I ignore the updates from Apple as 10.9.5 causes too many issues with the AMD kernel.

 

Screen sharing is via my intel hack running Yosemite 10.10.4 connected to a 27" Dell monitor @ 2560 x 1440, the screen share uses approximately 50% of the screen, not sure of the exact resolution but it is passable for occasional access/use.

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Hi folks,

 

Had a stable copy of Mavericks running on my Microserver for ages. However, I'm trying to change my system disk

 

I have used CCC to copy the partitions (live & backup) but there is no bootloader installed on the new disk.

 

I have used Niresh's ISO CD which allows me to boot (via the new disk), but I cannot for the life of me, remember how to install it onto the new system disk.

 

With Snow Leopard I just used the Cameleon PKG file and installed it onto the system disk but I don't know which package file to use for the Niresh (flaming) bootloader.

 

Can anyone remind me please ?

 

Cheers

 

TK

 

PS - I still have the original 'working' system disk, so can copy it from there if I know what I'm looking for.

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TK,

 

I just recently copied my system disk to an SSD and had the same problem.  I simply booted in to the new system disk using the USB installation media Bootloader (in your case this would be the cd) and downloaded the latest version of Chimera, installed this to the new system disk, repaired permissions and the system booted without the USB.  

 

If you use Chameleon Wizard you can select which Bootloader theme to use.

 

The cd you are using probably contains the original Niresh Bootloader & flame theme, if you turn on 'ShowAllFiles' you may be able to access and use the Bootloader and flame theme on the cd.

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Hey Ed,

 

Thanks for the super quick reply, but the grey matter is still not functioning that well !

 

Got it sorted with a fresh copy of this version of Chameleon (Chameleon-2.2svn-r2377.pkg - Attached)

 

Thanks for your help !

 

Cheers & good talking to you again :-)

 

TK

 

PS - Didn't need to repair any permissions either :-)

Chameleon-2.2svn-r2377.pkg.zip

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