On Thu, 10 Apr 2025 07:37:06 +0200
Philipp Klaus Krause <p...@spth.de> wrote:
> I'm trying to install OpenBSB 7.6 on an Xserve G5 cluster node.
Xserves are rare. I don't know whether anyone else tried to run a
recent version of OpenBSD on an Xserve G5. OpenBSD has a few Xserve
G4s for powerpc bulk package builds.
> Using an external USB optical drive, I was able to boot into the OpenBSD
> installer. Now, I am stuck at:
>
> Available disks are: none.
> Which disk is the root disk? ('?' for details)
I suspect that we are missing a SATA driver. I would like to see a
dmesg of your Xserve. You might send the dmesg out the serial port,
or save it on a USB flash drive. If you are out of USB ports, you
might need a USB hub. I would hotplug the flash drive after the
installer boots. If it attaches as sd1, you would create /dev/sd1i
and mount it,
# cd /dev
# sh MAKEDEV sd1
# mount /dev/sd1i /mnt
# dmesg > /mnt/dmesg
# umount /mnt
> I have tried with two different Xserve G5 cluster node, and different
> SATA HDDs. I have tried both with the onboard SATA-I controller, and a
> SATA-II controller in the PCI-X slot.
The disks are probably good. If your Xserve is like my Power Mac G5,
then each drive bay has an obvious pair of SATA cables, so it is
simple to connect both power and data.
Our macppc kernel has pciide(4) but not ahci(4). The onboard SATA is
probably pciide. If the PCI-X SATA is ahci, then we would need to
add ahci to the kernel. I don't know whether Open Firmware can boot
from the PCI-X slot, but its disks should show in "Available disks".
If you can netboot your Xserve, I might build a kernel and mail it to
you. I have been netbooting an iMac G4 because its internal hard disk
failed. I use OpenBSD/amd64 as a netboot server, with an Ethernet
wire from my iMac to my amd64 (not a cross cable, but the amd64's
gigabit port might auto-cross). The minimum is to serve dhcp, tftp
(for ofwboot) and nfs (for bsd.rd); see INSTALL.macppc.
In my amd64's /etc/hostname.re0,
inet 172.27.0.1 255.255.255.0
In /etc/dhcpd.conf,
subnet 172.27.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option routers 172.27.0.1;
option domain-name-servers 172.27.0.1;
range 172.27.0.32 172.27.0.127;
host maryland {
hardware ethernet 00:0a:95:89:5b:f2;
fixed-address 172.27.0.5;
option root-path "/home/maryland/root";
}
}
To get the iMac's hardware ethernet, I probably looked in
/var/db/dhcpd.leases after the iMac tried "boot enet:,ofwboot".
ofwboot is at /tftpboot/ofwboot
# rcctl set tftpd flags -l 172.27.0.1 /tftpboot
bsd.rd is at /home/maryland/root/bsd.rd
/etc/hosts has "172.27.0.5 maryland"
/etc/exports has "/home/maryland/root -maproot=root maryland"
--gkoehler
