Xserve Leopard Server Upgrade

I've been working on the Apple Xserve for a while now but haven't posted anything here (not that anyone is reading this ;)) because I have been waiting for a copy of the Leopard update to install on it.

With Tiger server, I managed to have a little play and experiment. I managed to create a mirror systems disk and successfully tested it out. Using these instructions on the Apple discussion forum. The one marked 'solved' is the one I followed even though it was for older version of OX Server.

I have now upgraded to Leopard server and attempted to do the same thing...

I chose the 'erase and install' option with the Leopard upgrade as I didn't have any data to keep. After the install, the new Leopard seems to have kept the RAID-1 I had setup on Tiger. I wonder if it wasn't already setup, would I had to have gone through the mirroring procedure like I did the first time (below)...

Mirroring of the 'system' disk on the Xserve is a pain since the Raid Utility does not allow you to perform operations, such as mirroring, on a 'mounted' filesystem (which the systems disk is). Therefore, you have you boot off another drive or the install disk or... before you attempt to mirror...

I have 3 disks in my Xserve, two the same size (68Gb) for mirroring and one larger, the third for situations like this - where I need to boot off it to be able to mirror my system disk!

So after the OS install or upgrade. I copied the all the systems (from Server HD) files to the third disk (Rescue):

lebigmac:/ admin$ sudo asr restore --source "/Volumes/Server HD" --target /Volumes/Rescue/
Validating target...done
Validating source...done
Validating sizes...done
Copying ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90asr: did not copy blessed information to target, which may have missing or out-of-date blessed folder information.
....100

Once copied over all the files, bless the device that is 'Rescue':

lebigmac:~ admin$ sudo bless --device /dev/disk1s2 -setBoot

Then restart the server. When it boots up check that '/' is mounted from /dev/disk1s2 and you can the start RAID utils and start mirroring (create a RAID-1 volume set) the two system disks. When done, set the original system disk device to boot:

lebigmac:~ admin$ sudo bless --device /dev/disk0s2 -setBoot

Below are some pictures of RAID utils on Tiger server:

My First Applescript

In Applications -> AppleScript folder there's the Script Editor. Open that up to write your AppleScript. My code was

tell application "Finder"
mount volume "smb://user:pass@server/share"
end tell

The above to to automount a samba share given username user and password password on a server server with share share!

Then use the file menu and save the script as an application. Then to execute just double click and hey presto, the share is mounted in /Volume/share!

Parallels and Windows XP Boot Camp install

So with the Windows installation with Boot Camp, you can now run Parallels within Mac OS X with the same installation of Windows that you installed via Boot Camp.

Of course you have to be running the latest version 3 of Parallels which you can download from their website. You have to have both your version 3 and 2 license codes if you upgraded.

If you get this error:

[C] My Boot Camp

Timed out waiting for the file system to initialize.
The volume has been ejected. You can use the init_timeout mount option to wait
longer.

Then you can read more in this thread http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=87017#post87017 and the Parallels FAQ says:

6. Getting Timeout error message when mounting VM Windows disks

Install the latest MacFUSE release, available at
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/downloads/list.

Then go to Finder -> Preferences and tick out "Connected servers".

This seems to fix that problem for me. I also had problems about a certain HAL.DLL being corrupted at one stage but a boot into Windows fully and back to Parallels boot seems to have fixed that. This was a better solution than Parallels' own suggestion of replacing the file! (given here: http://kb.parallels.com/entry/63/526/).

More info about Parallels, Windows and Boot Camp install here: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2990&article=Apple+Bootcamp+versus+Parallels

Boot Camp and Windows XP install

I've managed to install Windows on my Leopard iMac!

First start up Boot Camp (in Application/Utilities) and choose Create a Windows partition. Drag the boundary between Mac and Windows parition to the desired size of hard for both. Create the Windows partition.

You need to have a licensed copy of Windows CD. I had a slipstreamed Windows XP CD with SP2 on it which was burned by Nero, and subsequently caused the error "BOOT CD: cannot boot from cd - code 4" when the Mac booted and tried to install. This was solved reading this thread, and it was all to do with Nero not remembering the ADVANCED burning properties. I had to re-burn the bootable Win XP CDROM again and this time it booted and installed OK.

Go through the Windows install procedure and finish. When the Mac reboots, you need to HOLD DOWN THE ALT KEY to get the boot options - either into Leopard or Windows (or boot from the CDROM). Once on this screen hold CTRL to get the option of automatically boot into that option on a 'restart' of either Leopard or Windows.

Once Windows is installed, you will certainly have problems with the networking hardware. Windows can not detect the network card in the iMac and hence will not install it leaving you without an internet connection to do those Windows Updates!

I'm not too sure who makes the ethernet card inside the iMac but after a few searches 'YUKON' seems to crop up. I went to their website did a search for drivers using:

Product Category = PC Connectivity
Product Family = Yukon

And came up with this: http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverSearchResults.do

I downloaded the "W2000/ XP/2003/Vista x86 & x64 Multi-Language Installer (32-bit and 64-bit) for Yukon Devices" entry - the "Miniport Windows Installer" saved it onto a USB key and unzipped it on the Windows install (thank goodness it recognised the USB!)

Once decompressed I installed it, by clicking on setup.exe, and rebooted Windows. I then had a network interface and could set that up to get internet access!

I proceeded with the Windows updates and after a 3rd successive reboot, I was able to search for the graphics card drivers. In the iMac there lives an ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card. Goto this Apple forum thread and follow the 3rd post to download and install the driver package and then install the graphics card driver.