valv`0 Posted October 29, 2008 Share Posted October 29, 2008 Abstract Recently, i managed my hands onto an AMD X2 dualcore configuration from Lenovo with the following specs: Product: ThinkCentre A61 9143-W4Y Specs: Chipset AMD 690G Athlon™ 64 Sempron 3800+ 2GB 250GB 7200RPM S-ATA HDD NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE 128MB PCIe DVD Recordable S-ATA Marvell Gigabit Ethernet. PCI Ethernet RTL8139 Controller After a quick look, i decided to use it as my new MacOS X Server since the old one was gone, due to many pitfalls in the system. The shipped hardware wasn't what i wanted, giving me the opportunity to use some new hardware. The choice fallen to AMD X2 dualcore. The one i found was an AMD X2 5600+ Dualcore/SSE3 Compatible. Also, i bought some new ram. 4Gb is the max for this mobo, so i opted for 4x1Gb Kingston DDR2/667Mhz. Harddisk was doubled by a new 500Gb/SATA2 Samsung one. After the cosmetic fixes, the specs are as follow: Chipset AMD 690G Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 5600+ 4GB DDR2/667Mhz 500GB 7200RPM S-ATA2 HDD NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE 128MB PCIe DVD Recordable S-ATA Marvell Gigabit Ethernet PCI Ethernet RTL8139 Controller Installed Leo4Allv5 with the following options: X11 Selected No Chipset Driver Selected (default AHCI driver was used, BIOS was setted accordly) No AUDIO Driver Selected (Lenovo is shipped with a Builtin Monitor USB Audio Interface, that work pretty good with osx) Nvidia Kext Driver Selected NVinject/128Mb Selected All Network Subtree Drivers Selected All Applications Subtree Selected Intel AMDCpuDisabler Selected PS2Fix Selected AboutThisMac Fix Selected Kernel 9.4.0 no-vanilla Selected SMBios Enabler Selected SMBios-667 Selected ACPIPlatform 1.1.0 Selected BootLoader Chameleon Selected All AMD Patch Selected Nothing strange during the first boot. All devices work fine. However, after some hours of use i noticed strange behaviours, occurring at random times and drivers problems, that i'll try to summarize here. After some investigations i found that the log file /var/log/system.log was full of this lines: Oct 28 13:08:03 mDNSResponder[32]: mDNSPlatformRawTime: last_mach_absolute_time 7EF9D3330000008F Oct 28 13:08:03 mDNSResponder[32]: mDNSPlatformRawTime: this_mach_absolute_time 7EF9A5520000008F Searching the forum and googling around gave me the solution. This problem is a known issue due to AMD dual core architecture. Simply, the two core doesn't agree with the ticks issued by the kernel rendering them out of sync. This make the applications becoming unstables with random crashes. To solve this, i used the voodoo_beta2 kernel, using the following parameters at the boot: fsb=200000000 busratio=145 This give me a correct tick issuing: Oct 28 19:44:30 localhost kernel[0]: TSC: Frequency = 2900.0001MHz, bus frequency = 200.0000MHz, multiplier = 14.5 Oct 28 19:44:30 localhost kernel[0]: Darwin Kernel Version 9.5.0: Tue Oct 14 07:39:11 IST 2008; Voodoo; Beta 2c :xnu-1228.7.58/BUILD/obj/RELEASE_I386 Moreover, i found that the builtin AFP client (accessible with APPLE+K from finder) doesn't work properly. It give me all the time a strange message saying that the address is not a valid address, eventhough I use smb:// or afp://. At first sight, i supposed that the two problems was related, but a quick look onto search engines come back me to the fact that for some strange reasons there's a broken link onto /System/Library/Filesystems. Some guides point me to the problem but the suggested solution doesn't work for me. Even if my system was affected by the problem described in the guides, fixing the linking doesn't help, so i decided to put a whole Filesystem subdir from a clean Kalyway 10.5.2 install into my system. This solved my problem. Last, but not least, is about the IONetworking.kext. Searching the system.log i found many of this lines: servermgrd[76]: *** -[WPWebServices defaultWebServiceWithSession:]: couldn't obtain the MAC address of interface en0 This messages seems to be the root of the slowness about Webserver / Server Admin Applications. The problem is the IONetworking kernel extensions. For some unknown reason it make the mac address of my en0 not pollable by applications. To solve this, i used the one shipped with the kalyway 10.5.2 image. However, using a 9.5.0 kernel with a 9.40 System.kext, is not a so called "smart move". In fact, many extensions give problems: iPOD and/or iPhone, and all the other removable usb devices, cannot be mounted due to Mach.kext version problems. kextd[25]: a different version of dependency extension /System/Library/Extensions/System.kext/PlugIns/Mach.kext is already loaded So, i decided to switch to 10.5.5 Server Update. Using the Marvin Decrypter/CPUID fixer, i packaged all the critical updates and installed them. Switching to 10.5.5 take out the problems giving me a 100% working MacOS X 10.5.5 Server. Following there're some detailed infos about the Server Update. It solves the following issues: update to 10.5.5 AFP client Fix IONetworking Fix mDNSPlatformRawTime: last_mach_absolute_time problem random freeze problem you can find it asking littlegreen about osxsrvupd1055. Description This's an incremental update to 10.5.5 Client/Server. What you need? - 10.5.4 Client/Server working installation (i use Leo4Allv5) - AMD Processor Howto? Doubleclick the installer, or go into Terminal and execute it. After completed, go to APPLE->Software Update, and install ALL updates. Reboot Doubleclick into packagesFixer. Enjoy What do you do in my system? Simply, i replace the changed files with a recursive cp (cp -R). Thanks go out to Eruanna, the OSX86 scene, leo4all team, uphuck, kalyway, jas, kabyl, voodoo_xnu kernel developers, and all the other that i forgotten (sorry dudes!). ImageShack for Free Image Hosting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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