Xserve G5 (RackMac3,1) Installation Issues on powerpc64

[Evan Sabin]

Firstly, likely to someone’s satisfaction and relief, I’m now starting the CD the right way. I have a 10.3 install disk just in case, but I started with 11.1 this morning, and this is what happened:

The installer runs using 11.1-STABLE, up until attempting to fetch packages from ftp.freebsd.org. In such a case, all I get is repeated “File unavailable (e.g. file not found, no access)” errors over and over until it gives up and claims it has failed to retrieve the remote distribution. So that didn’t work worth a darn.

Then, I did the unthinkable and installed 12.0-CURRENT with seemingly no problems for the most part. Unfortunately — and perhaps this is standard procedure, though I doubt it — kernel.txz is taking ages to extract (it’s been about half an hour at the time of writing). It’s been stuck at 21% for this time with no updates despite being able to move the mouse and select text etc., but I’m not keen on shutting down the system mid-install. Not to mention, the system is running at full blast. Should I go ahead and stop this, then try 10.3?


> On Feb 13, 2018, at 3:27 PM, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 02/13/18 11:30, Evan Sabin wrote:
>> I have run the Apple Hardware Test on an Xserve G5 (dual 2GHz 970FX) and confirmed that I am unable to install FreeBSD due to issues with the installer itself on powerpc64, specific to the Xserve G5 apparently, judging by numerous successful installations on PowerMacs of the same era.
>> 
>> Last night, I downloaded and burned 11.1 release to a DVD and successfully booted from OF (accomplished through removing the hard disk at boot time) to the FreeBSD kernel, where I immediately encountered a kernel panic due to a floating-point unavailable trap; exception 0x800.
> 
> That is not good. Can you try an 11-STABLE or 12-CURRENT snapshot?
> 
>> This morning I downloaded and burned 10.4 release onto another DVD and attempted to install — not a whole lot of success. I am able to boot into the live CD, but cannot proceed with the installation, as I receive a generic partitioner error upon attempting to use the auto or manual, forcing me to continuously restart the installation process. The shell works, though I’m not perfectly sure if that can be used to partition the system. Might this be related to my “lazy” workaround of booting from DVD by removing the hard drive and re-inserting it once OF has recognized the DVD?
> 
> It might be. Are you booting by serial console or with video? You can press and hold "C" with a video console to boot the DVD with the hard drive in.
> -Nathan
> 
>> Is there any patch/workaround I might be able to use just to complete installation? I am no programmer, but am competent enough to patch and compile code to fix things in a pinch. Ideally I’d like to use the latest version of FreeBSD but will do what it takes to get some relatively modern software working on this machine.
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