Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:57:36 +0200 From: Andreas Tobler <andreast-list@fgznet.ch> To: Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> Cc: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Current support for Xserve G5 Message-ID: <4C129530.3030909@fgznet.ch> In-Reply-To: <AF230493-CAA9-46ED-9F65-5948923DC8BC@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> References: <C15A6C39-B7A2-4D08-A40E-E2257CF95FC4@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> <4C118649.7030007@freebsd.org> <AF230493-CAA9-46ED-9F65-5948923DC8BC@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
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On 11.06.10 21:39, Paul Mather wrote: > On Jun 10, 2010, at 8:41 PM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote: > >> On 06/10/10 13:20, Paul Mather wrote: >>> In our lab we have two Xserve G5 servers. We'd like to keep >>> using these, but, because of EOL issues with Mac OS X, I am >>> looking for an Open Source replacement. My preference is for >>> *BSD---preferably FreeBSD or NetBSD. When I looked a while ago, >>> it seemed that the Xserve G5 was either not supported or not very >>> functional under these two OSes. (NetBSD, for example, had no >>> support for the onboard SATA controller and so could only run >>> diskless via netbooting.) >>> >>> I just looked at the FreeBSD/ppc project Web page and was happy >>> to see the Apple Xserve G5 as reported as running for FreeBSD >>> 8.1. Can anyone tell me whether this runs fully for the stock >>> Xserve G5 hardware, or does it have some serious limitations to >>> deployment, as mentioned for NetBSD above? >>> >> >> It is fully supported, and we use G5 xserves for building PPC >> binary packages, so they are quite stable. > > This is excellent news! I'll be able to use FreeBSD after all. :-) > >> The only caveat is that 64-bit PPC support will first be appearing >> in the 9.0 release series, so you will only be able to use 2 of the >> 4 GB of RAM in your machines with 8.1. > > Is this 2 GB per process of user addressable space or 2 GB of > physical RAM usable across all processes? I remember having to mess > around with kernel address space size to increase it on a ZFS-based > FreeBSD/i386 system. Is this something similar, or is it some > hardware limitation? > > When you say, "64-bit PPC support will first be appearing in the 9.0 > release series," does this mean it is not currently in HEAD? I'm not > averse to running FreeBSD-CURRENT (I've done it in the past) to try > it out if support is already in HEAD. See here: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ppc/2010-April/004167.html Nathan knows more about when this is going into -CURRENT. But at least you could try if you have spare cycles of time and cpu. Gruss, Andreas
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