[Bioclusters] Linux on Xserve, anyone?

[Robert Olson]

I'd love to hear too. I'm just today tinkering getting Debian running  
on a new Mac Pro box, turning out to be a bit of a dance. Have you  
read the howtos over at http://wiki.debian.org/DebianOnIntelMacPro ?  
I wonder if any of those will help.

--bob

On Aug 6, 2007, at 4:52 PM, Lee Watkins 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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