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

janitor

By janitor,
in OSx86 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

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rtrtrtrt
rtrtrtrt
Posted
Posted
Did I miss anything? Do I need to install/update Chameleon? I plan to put macszfs on the machine and use it as a file server, so I do not need graphics, sound, etc...

 

Hi Antikus did you make any progress?

I'm about to make an attempt this weekend - so anything you learned and can share would be great.

----------------

Update

Struggling to make headway after a lot of hours. Get to Part2 of Part 2 on Janitors walkthrough.

 

2. You should shortly get to the standard ModBin boot prompt, with a number of booting options detailed on screen.

 

but instead of ModBin boot prompt, I get a black screen with a flashing underline cursor.

 

I know the Proliant is good as I installed Win 7 already.

I had upgraded the memory and installed a sata card - again all working under Win & but i removed them anyway to make sure.

I've upgraded the BIOS to the patched version. Tried any number of changes to the BIOS settings.

I can use the Installer disc to boot a Mac Pro. Disc i used is a usb hdd.

 

Not sure where to go from here - anyone have any suggestions?

-----------------

still struggling

Made the installer as a DVD - same black screen result on boot.

Confirmed tha Nawcoms Mod CD 0.3.1 will boot the HP. But when put in vanilla or installer SL get the waiting for root message.

------------------

Managed to get up and running Using Janitors original files/walkthro - thanks again.

 

Had a few stability issues and am now reloading again for the nth time. Did try to use CCC to clone after each change but in the end was unable to restore from those.

 

  • 10.6.0 to 10.6.8 straightforward and no problems
  • 10.6.8 with ethernet - needed both kextx to get working and manual config.
  • USB rollback - seemed unstable when using usb ports befoe and after i did this step. for example reboot fails if a usb drive connected.
  • HD graphics kexts with onboard 4200 - tried various options - unable to get away from 1024x 768. Has anyone got this working?

 

The HD graphics attempts messed things up -panics etc and was unable to restore from any of the above staged CCC backups - so now reloading.

 

Will probably stop at getting network running and leave HD graphics/USB Rollback for now and see if I can get to use the machine for a while.

---------

 

Whilst reloading I remembered one other odd symptom. The system seems to regularly be 'waiting' for me to move the mouse. Sounds odd I know.

 

A couple of examples - the 10.6.8 process seems to be doing nothing, then I move the mouse and simultaneously the disk activity starts again.

 

Or click on a button to ok an activity within an app - the window does nothing till you move the mouse.

 

It happens so regularly i know it's not a coincidence.

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antikus
antikus
Posted
Posted

Hey rtrtrtrt,

 

I just saw your post. I had problems trying to get it up and running using the CD+DVD. Despite that I had flashed the BIOS, the machine would still not boot the installation DVD (the dreaded "waiting for root device" thingy). I think this is something to do with the port and how it's wired. Even after I got everything up, I could not boot from a HDD connected to that port.

 

Anyhow, I used the USB stick approach. Got it running as I described in my previous post. Get Chameleon Wizard, it simplifies keeping things up to date. I did not mess with the graphics at all. NIC and the custom kext did not work too well for me -- the system would loose the network under heavy network load and require restart. I bought Intel gigabit NIC and used Apple's original drivers. Works like a charm.

 

Had it KP on me couple times trying to use Hardware Monitor and Temperature Monitor. Got rid of them and using the smartmontools to keep an eye on the disks. Works well.

 

Yes, I do observe similar 'waiting for mouse' effect. It's not too bad. I can leave with it as a NAS.

 

I updated my kernel: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversi...hp/t265181.html

Seem like the machine is more stable and has less CPU load during IO.

 

I'm using it as NAS and media server, running headless with maczfs and Plex installed. 6 hdds + HighPoint Rocket 620 + a small ssd for the os. It's pretty stable. Had it lock on me a couple times during the last 2 weeks. No KP. The machine would just freeze -- mouse moves but nothing else works. Required reboots. I have a slight suspicion it's my cheap ssd, but I cannot test it easily.

 

Regarding your reboots with USB drive connected -- check you BIOS settings, make sure USB boot priority is set to low.

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callumrogan
callumrogan
Posted
Posted

Followed your guide and everything works perfectly until the final reboot after all kexts and boot.plist is in place

 

in chameleon i now get 'memory allocation error, fatal cannot proceed'

 

and thats it :/! stuck!

 

(i have 3GB of ram installed)

 

 

in single user/verbose

 

 

'ACPI TABLE not found, using 0 as uid value.

Using PCI-Root-UID value: 0

Framebuffer @0xD0000000 MMIO @0xFe8F0000 I/O Port

ATI card POSTed, reading vbios from legacy space

 

Memory allocation error!

 

 

 

Ok, using graphicsenabler=no again worked oddly on the apple loading screen it freezes and only continues if you press the power button on the front of the microserver,

 

but im still stuck at 1280x1024 wich is better than last time but my monitors 1920x1080

 

also getting alot of freezes that are fixed by pressing the 'power' button again :/ :/!

 

setting my network prefs to manual dhcp and setting an IP didnt fix my network connection, tried to manually change MAC address using sudo ifconfig en0 ether and i get a freeze

 

what did i do wrong =o?

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tk007b
tk007b
Posted
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Hi,

 

All of the power button freezes and mac address issues are the same symptom - bad ethernet kext.

 

Search through the post and install the FULL Duplex Kext (to S/L/E folder) and repair permissions with the tool Kext Wizard, reboot and you should see a big improvement.

 

Cheers

 

TK

 

Followed your guide and everything works perfectly until the final reboot after all kexts and boot.plist is in place

 

in chameleon i now get 'memory allocation error, fatal cannot proceed'

 

and thats it :/! stuck!

 

(i have 3GB of ram installed)

 

 

in single user/verbose

 

 

'ACPI TABLE not found, using 0 as uid value.

Using PCI-Root-UID value: 0

Framebuffer @0xD0000000 MMIO @0xFe8F0000 I/O Port

ATI card POSTed, reading vbios from legacy space

 

Memory allocation error!

 

 

 

Ok, using graphicsenabler=no again worked oddly on the apple loading screen it freezes and only continues if you press the power button on the front of the microserver,

 

but im still stuck at 1280x1024 wich is better than last time but my monitors 1920x1080

 

also getting alot of freezes that are fixed by pressing the 'power' button again :/ :/!

 

setting my network prefs to manual dhcp and setting an IP didnt fix my network connection, tried to manually change MAC address using sudo ifconfig en0 ether and i get a freeze

 

what did i do wrong =o?

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tk007b
tk007b
Posted
Posted

No worries mate,

 

Let me see if I can remember it. I will edit it a couple of times till i'm happy and put 'Complete' at the end when I've finished tinkering.

 

Cheers

 

TK

 

01. Clean install of 10.6.7 with MOD USB onto fresh Mac Partition (as per instructions)

 

02. Just get KEXT Wizard (post #58 p3 (near bottom) ) it's does the same as Kext Helper an Kext Utilities from [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] but it's better.

 

03. Install the Duplex Ethernet Kext (p5 post #86) using Kext Wizard in the S/L/E folder and then repair permissions (using Kext Wizard) on the S/L/E folders.

 

04. Reboot and it should the network adapter.

 

05. Now run the the 10.6.8 combo update until it finished and then before restarting I added the injector kext to the /Extra/Extensions folder and only the ATI5000Controller.kext, the ATIFramebuffer.kext and the ATISupport.kext to the /S/L/E folder.

 

06. Download and install Chameleon 2 RC5 v747 (or higher) (available here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...st&id=87336 )

 

07. Copy the com.appleBoot.plist file to the Extra folder (now when you re-boot you don't have to type the 'maxmem' and 'GraphicsEnabler' commands (from the original instructions)

 

08. Copy the ATI5000injector.kext file to Extra/Extensions

 

09. Copy the ATI5000Controller.kext, the ATIFramebuffer.kext and the ATISupport.kext to the /S/L/E folder

 

10. Run Kext Utility to repair permissions using Extra tickbox

 

11. Now install the legacy kernel 10.8.0/10.6.8 update from here .. http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=791

 

12. Install the USB Rollback KEXTS (post #58 p3 (near bottom) ) and as always when making any kext change will run the kext wizard and repair permissions

 

Afterwards

13 If you get the latest bios from P4 post #69 (note bios instructions) and then use the modified one on P2 post #35, you should be able to use the DVD drive if you have one installed.

 

 

I think that's COMPLETE .. does that help ?

 

.. give it a go and let me know

 

;-)

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callumrogan
callumrogan
Posted
Posted

thanks tk i got network working on 10.6 but trying to follow splonks SL server i installed the server packages checked my network was still intact, rebooted and every serial i enter just says invalid <.<

 

im guessing this has to do with needing to update my MAC address every time i rebooted to be able to get a network connection

 

dno how to get around this

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callumrogan
callumrogan
Posted
Posted

just did it all up to 10.6.8 and works perfectly thanks tk

 

will try doing server when lion gets ported on this or something!

 

 

one thing i dont have a 5450 so im still using graphicsenabler=no im not sure which kext i need to allow me to set it to yes,

 

and is it the same for everyone in that sleep just causes the system to crash?

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tk007b
tk007b
Posted
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Glad your sorted :)

 

The problem with sleep is not a software issue. It's to do with the HP BIOS.

 

HP, in their wisdom did not add S3 power support which is needed for sleep to work (for any operating system installed on the Microserver). This is because as it was designed as a server, HP deemed it unnecessary. What makes it worse, is that they have no intention of offering that functionality in the future :( . Incidently, selecting sleep no longer crashes my machine (but still does not work)

 

Futurewise, 'someone' (his name is in the post somewhere) needs to do something (getting technical here I know) before we can install Lion. However, I'm not sure when (if ever) it will happen.

 

If I hear I will update this thread

 

Cheers

 

TK

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splonk
splonk
Posted
Posted

Re: Lion, the chappy in question is nawcom and after a hiatus for health reasons, it appears he may be back. You might want to follow the thread linked by antikus further up on this page, especially as that kernel performs better than nawcom's one.

 

With regard to SL server, I found that you need to feed in a working link into the network card before you boot up, otherwise SL does not assign a proper MAC address to the card. That is crucial for SL Server otherwise you get stuck on that registration/invalid loop. Try booting in verbose mode after installing the Server packages and see whether the network card gets initialised and a network connection established. If you keep stumbling on this, your only other option is to borrow another network card or a usb ethernet dongle at least until you can get Server installed and registered.

I have done it before with a usb wireless dongle as another alternative, but that is the riskiest option since those usually contain Ralink chips and their performance under OSX is inconsistent to say the least.

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tk007b
tk007b
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Scanned through the posts and found the blog. Sounds like he's going though hell, poor sod.

 

If it comes then great .. if not, then it's not the end of the world, but he's bookmarked :unsure:

 

So far my machine has been extremely stable, so I'm pretty chuffed.

 

Cheers

 

TK

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SunnyD
SunnyD
Posted
Posted

Hi All

 

Had my microserver a couple of months now and i'm running the following:

 

DVD in 5.25" bay (toshiba

2 x 2TB in RAID 1

1 x 1TB as backup disk

1 x 250GB (50% partition for windows server 2008, 50% spare for hackintosh when I get round to it)

5GB memory

 

It's in need of some TLC and i've hit some walls and could do with some pointers... Sorry if the questions have been asked before

 

Is 6450 gfx really worth the addition to the server? Anyone using onboard to do all the heavy video lifting? I run XBMC on the onboard GFX and it's fairly snappy, but uses a fair chunk of CPU to render 720p. WIll a 6450 help the situation, what cpu usage could I expect for 720/1080p?

 

Anyone have issues booting from CDROM? I've had problems booting from USB and CDROM since i got the server, seems to be intermittant. It could be my 2006 CD-Rom drive or maybe something to do with the bios talking over IDE to it? Any ideas if the Russian bios mod might help out here?

 

What sort of speed can I expect over the esata port if I were to bios mod it? Anyone using an external ESATA expansion for it yet?

 

Seeing as i'm using a port to connect up the cdrom, will I need a SATA expansion card if I want to install a 5th drive (ssd)?

 

Anyone using RAID 5 on Snow Leopard hackintosh? Just wondering if there's a performance overhead. Do you have examples of throughput? I've heard under windows server that raid 5 is slow unless there is lots of spare RAM, does same apply here and will 5GB suffice, you recon?

 

Dual Booting with windows server okay? I've used EasyBCD under windows before and it has an option to add osx to the windows boot device listing... would this be sufficient to finalise the install?

 

Just looking through the initial post by Janitor... any ideas if it's been updated (I can't tell by looking at time stamps)... just wondering if following this original guide is a good idea or if there might be an updated version floating about round tinternet somewhere? :(

 

Sorry for the newbie questions, i've not built a hackintosh box before so i'm a little nervous about changing things around!

 

Cheers

Sunny

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splonk
splonk
Posted
Posted

A few thoughts

 

a) XBMC is optimised for nVidia cards, not ATI. If you are running XBMC over Windows, you might get more mileage out of ATI, but I have no idea as I always run XBMC Live or on Linux.

B) I am not sure that the HD6450 will give any more useful performance over the HD5450. The HD5450 is fine for 1080p. Neither card will give you any real gaming potential and there are also heat and power issues to consider. The only modern nVidia card that is not going to breach the 25W bus threshold is the GT210 and it cannot deal with 1080p Blu Ray or large rips without stuttering.

c) The IDE-SATA bridge on SATA port 5 is a bugger. I put my system disk there and had to return it to one of the cage slots because it had problems booting half the time. I am running the Russian bios. You would need it to separate SATA ports 5 and 6 (ODD and eSATA). The solution would be to add an internal SATA card to the x1 slot if you want to use HDDs on ports 5 & 6 and not deal with this mess of a controller chip.

d) If you want to run 6 drives in the system in lieu of any ODD, which is possible with a riser bracket via eBay, you can by running an eSATA to SATA cable from the port at the rear back into the microserver and up to the drive. Obviously, you would need to run the Russian bios.

e) I have run a test install of OSX server on the eSATA port. This was an external 2.5" eSATA drive. It ran pretty much as fast as an internal drive.

f) With regard to Windows, I find it easiest to keep these on separate drives when dual booting. No faffing about with bootloaders, just hit F12 on startup and select the disk to boot.

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SunnyD
SunnyD
Posted
Posted

Thanks for the tips Splonk :rolleyes:

 

Sounds like SATA port 5 (which I connect to the ODD, i think) could be causing the boot issue then. I want to keep the ODD, but the lack of boot is a bit of a deal breaker... I'm going to try the F12 at boot trick you mention and see if that helps. If it doesn't I might just pick up a SATA card and run the ODD to that, what do you think?

 

Might also try to stuff an SSD in there to replace my slow boot disk, so the SATA card could come in handy for that

 

Any knowledge on the software RAID 5 front in terms of performance? Or, do you know if anyone's figured out how to get hardware raid running under SL?

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splonk
splonk
Posted
Posted

Just a correction. It's not F12 on the HP, I got my HP mixed up with my Dell. You would need to set boot priorities in the bios prior to bootup, which is a bit tiresome if you constantly flip between the two. As a rule, Chameleon is pretty good at picking up other bootable volumes on other drives, so I would use that as the default bootloader. You can try using Windows as the default, but it takes more effort to set up, particularly with OSX volumes.

 

The ODD boot issues are more with OSX. If you are having problems with Windows, make sure you have the AMD HP IDE-SATA drivers downloaded and installed rather than those that come with Windows. I don't really bother with Windows much and not on this machine, so you might want to have a read of relevant forums. I can recommend two to start with:

 

Wegotserved

 

AV Forums

 

The latter has gone to three parts in a few months, so there is a lot of reading material there.

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antikus
antikus
Posted
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Any knowledge on the software RAID 5 front in terms of performance? Or, do you know if anyone's figured out how to get hardware raid running under SL?

 

AFAIK, Mac OS X does not do software RAID 5.

 

You can look into installing ZFS (see http://code.google.com/p/maczfs/ or http://tenscomplement.com/) and making a raidz, which is ZFS alternative to RAID 5 and has noted advantages over RAID 5. Regarding raidz performance, it would depend on your configuration, e.g., number and speed of individual drives. I see 291/97 MiB/s reads/writes on raidz2. raidz2 is slower than raidz but more reliable (think RAID 6).

 

http://oceansidecoding.wordpress.com/2011/...mance-analysis/

http://oceansidecoding.wordpress.com/2011/...updated-kernel/

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Dümpler
Dümpler
Posted
Posted

Hey guys, I recently bought a Macbook Air and the HP N36L. So I'm not only new to the whole server thing but also to all the Mac OS X stuff. Please don't be mad about my nooby questions and my bad English :)

 

My problem is this part:

15. Once you have rebooted, you should be greeted with the standard 'green' Chameleon boot loader screen.

 

When it reboots it doesn't show me the 'green' Chameleon boot loader screen. Instead it says on a black screen:

 

boot0: GPT

boot0: test

boot0: test

boot0: error_

 

Does anyone has an suggestion what I did wrong and how to fix it...?

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tk007b
tk007b
Posted
Posted

Hi mate,

 

If you have multiple hard drive, then go into the BIOS and make sure it's booting from the correct hard drive

 

Good luck

 

TK

 

Hey guys, I recently bought a Macbook Air and the HP N36L. So I'm not only new to the whole server thing but also to all the Mac OS X stuff. Please don't be mad about my nooby questions and my bad English ;)

 

My problem is this part:

15. Once you have rebooted, you should be greeted with the standard 'green' Chameleon boot loader screen.

 

When it reboots it doesn't show me the 'green' Chameleon boot loader screen. Instead it says on a black screen:

 

boot0: GPT

boot0: test

boot0: test

boot0: error_

 

Does anyone has an suggestion what I did wrong and how to fix it...?

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antikus
antikus
Posted
Posted
Anyone have a problem where the ethernet stops working.

 

Reinstalling the kext, repairing permissions and rebooting always cures it but it's happened a few times now on both the half and full duplex kexts

 

Cheers

 

TK

 

Yes. I was getting that. Ethernet would just die under load. The Network panel interface in System Preference would claim that the network cable is disconnected. Unplugging/plugging the cable would not help and require a reboot. After reboot ethernet would work fine for web browsing and such, but would die again if I tried to copy a file to the microserver. I gave up and bought Intel's Ct NIC for $25. That one works with Apple's own kext.

 

I think the problem is that BCM5723 controller has a few bugs that a driver is supposed to take care off. The FreeBSD driver, the one that the kext os based on, has known problems with that controller (google "freebsd bge watchdog"). There is an official Broadcom driver for Linux, but I do not know how much of that code made it into the kext. The guy who made the kext has a different NIC, so I bet he didn't worry about support for 5723.

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antikus
antikus
Posted
Posted

Yes, looks like the right one. I got it from superbiiz.com. It was $25 including tax and shipping:

 

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=I...d674c02b1d1cd56

 

You would need to tweak the ktext plist a bit:

 

http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4057

 

 

ok thanks,

 

Good to know it's not just me.

 

Is this the one that works for you ?

 

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF...75-3769777.html

 

Cheers

 

TK

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