Kallisti

What's in a name?

"kallisti" (καλλίστη actually) is the legendary inscription on the Golden Apple of Discord. What better name for an Apple server machine located in a Discordian themed data center?

Is it really a server?

This remains to be seen. There is nothing equivalent to IPMI over LAN on it. No network attached console or power controls. First attempts at Wake on LAN failed, too. And forget about redundant power supplies. But we'll see what happens as it's being built.

Whatever for?

Well, it's one more architecture (powerpc) to run Debian on at home. It actually still has a pretty decent hardware complement (which is to say that it can handle more workload than my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S III.)

Hardware

WARNING: The plastic inside this computer is brittle. I don't think I'm too brutish with my computers. But in poking around inside, I've manage to snap a retaining clip on the battery holder and on the PCI card riser. :(

Chassis

Apple Xserve G5 s/n QP5260YBSLZ.

Management

There is no network attached management for this machine.

Processor(s)

2 socket system board. Populated with 2 IBM PowerPC 970FX CPUs with 2.3GHz clocks.

Memory

8x 1Gibyte PC4200 ECC DDR DIMMs for 8Gibytes of RAM

Mass Storage

3 Apple Drive Modules. These are Apple proprietary hotplug drive sleds. Proprietary down to the screws needed to attach the drives. (The drives do sit in the trays without screws, though.) Based on random internet readings, it may be that these connections support SATA 1.0 (1.5Gbits/sec) data rates only and that drives must not attempt to negotiate a SATA 2.0 (3.0Gbits/sec) connection to the controller. (This SATA 1.0 limit may only apply to the optional Xserve RAID card that is not installed.)

This machine also has a 4-port Qlogic based PCI-X FibreChannel HBA in the lower slot. Not known yet whether this is a 1Gbits/sec, 2Gbits/sec, or 4Gbits/sec adapter. (Most likely 2Gbits/sec, based it its age.) This card was replaced with an HP AD194A card, providing 2 Intel based 1000baseT Ethernet ports and 2 Qlogic 4Gbps FibreChannel ports.

Network

2 gigabit Ethernet connections. I believe these are Broadcom based, so expect the usual firmware rigamarole to get these working.

In addition to the onboard 1000baseT ports, there are 2 Intel based 1000baseT ports on an HP AD194A card in the lower PCI-X slot.

Manufacturer Support Info

Search apple.com for "xserve G5".

Operating System

Debian 8.current will be installed by over the network.

Actually, the netbooting is not going terribly well. Open Firmware's TFTP client is requesting a file, but never asking for a second block. So the alternative will be getting the yaboot bootloader, its config file, a kernel and the Debian installer initrd image onto a disk partition that Open Firmware can read, then doing most of the install over the network.

OS installation did happen. Unable to convince Open Firmware to retrieve the yaboot loader from the network, I removed a hard drive from the machine, created an empty Apple Partition Map (yay for GNU parted) and a 1Gibyte HFS (not HFS+) and the yaboot, yaboot.conf, kernel image, and initial RAM disk image (yay for hfsutils). Open Firmware can boot this just fine, and the Debian installer runs perfectly. See the "Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting" section of the Debian installation manual for info on this.

Applications

Applications are for users. We don't have any of those. But, this machine may be a good choice to run the Hercules IBM Mainframe emulator. The mainframe would certainly feel more comfortable, since it's running on an IBM CPU.

Serial console port and Open Firmware

Procedure for accessing Open Firmware on the serial port

Connect serial terminal. Use null modem cable if using another PC. Kermit works well if one finds oneself without a VT102 handy. (Though a VT102 won't be much help: its serial interface tops out at 19200bps.)
Set serial port for 57600 bits/second, no stop bits, 8 data bits, no parity bits, no flow control.
Power off Xserve
Hold "System Identifier" button
Without releasing the "System Identifier" button, press and release power button.
After top row of blue lights to right of System Identifier button has cycled in blue cylon fashion, release System ID button.
Press System ID button 6 times to illuminate the 7th blue LED. (LEDs on this display are numbered right to left, starting at 1. Light 7 illuminated chooses the Open Firmware option.
Hold the System ID button until LEDs in top row cycle again (approximately 2 seconds), then release.

And what do you do when you're there?

Random important things

The serial console device seems to be known as ttyPZ0 and runs at 57600 bits/second. Put console=ttyPZ0,57600 on the kernel command line.

Resources

Google. Google. Google.
And the Debian PowerPC related pages, too.
Firmware: Searching http://support.apple.com/ for "xserve g5 firmware" eventually landed me at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL560, which has a large Download button. And, naturally, this is a MacOS binary, so we'll need to have a running MacOS X in order to do a firmware update. (Go back to the "is it really a server" question above.)