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Linux-only POWER5 server From IBM
vaporland writes "This story from Infoworld.com talks about IBM's new low priced POWER5 based servers which will ship with Red Hat or Suse Linux, but not IBM's AIX.
My question is, will it boot up Apple's OSX Server?"
Highly doubtful, OSX requires special roms... Maybe in Mac-On-Linux though.
IBM wants your apps. They'll give you a free laptop bag if you develop an app for Linux on their Power platform. I think the most disturbing thing about this is the picture of Tux in a blue tux. He looks like he's ready to sing in a lounge somewhere.
But (somewhat) seriously, I could make room a four-way 64 bit Linux box on my desk. Chances are you've probably not seen my desk -- not an easy task.
Recipes for geeks -- no meatloaf, we promise.
My question is, will it boot up Apple's OSX Server?
I don't know about that, but I know that this does.
No. Next question.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
instead of a bunch of people with no idea what the answer might be and just attack IBMs marketing practises
Wonder if it would run YellowDog Linux?
Odds are that it wont. Diferent (if similar) CPU and architecture. Also, since when is 5k$ low cost?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
x86/AMD pretty much rules the linux market to date, although it would be great to see an alternative get entrenched.
My question is, will it boot up Apple's OSX Server?"
No, because OSX does checks to look for Apple-specific hardware on boot.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Is there anything on the silicon they would prevent me from installing AIX on it?
With the supposed capacity to emulate 20 servers virtually, can these low/medium-end POWER5s actually perform adequately (comparably to the single-servers they are targeting)? That seems like a bit of a stretch.
It is commendable, however, that IBM is maintaining its Linux focus (at least on the servers). Now if they'd start pushing the desk/laptop a little harder...
But it should run like mad under Mac On Linux (MOL).
Apple's OSes need special ROMs, but I know that people have been able to boot MacOS on non-apple G3/G4 computers so I don't see why it isn't possible that you could get OSX server running on these boxes without much trouble.
It does violate the EULA for OSX though, but then again, what doesn't these days. I doubt Apple would ever take you to court over it unless you started a company that sells boxes running OSX server. Even then though, doesn't this qualify as reverse engineering for interoperability? Anyone? Bueller?
I would be much more interested in IBM dropping prices on a Power5 desktop. It seems unlikely, but I would buy that thing in a second.
This is good news. Currently, there are few 64bit platforms where the hardware and software (Linux) are supported by the vendor. I wonder how well these will perform, and more importantly will IBM release a good compiler for them so that we can use them.
Will it boot OS/2?
Unfortunately, AIX has too many proprietary IBM extensions we don't want in Linux. More importantly, can it run DB2 or WSAD? Of course, it would be nice to hook it up to an iPod.
Because the current RedHat offering, RHEL, is a BUSINESS application, and in business the mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies VERY strongly.
If you want 2.6, just use Fedora instead.
I can't wait to write JCL at home!
> A better question is "why is RedHat STILL not using the current stable kernel series?"
> 2.6 has been out for how long, folks?
Judging by the kernel mailing list, not long enough for use in a stable server OS.
To hear them tell it they have rolled the "important" updates that are in 2.6 into their enterprise (2.4) kernel.
You've forgotten that 2.4 wasn't even stable until 2.4.18ish. Just because someone (Linus) is now calling the kernel 2.6.x rather than 2.5.x doesn't magically mean that you (or RedHat) should use it.
When did IBM start using Redhat on the Power achitecture? It's been SuSE for a long time now hasn't it?
Here is the answer...
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/kernel26/
because most of the features important to Redhat has already been backported to their "2.4"
The thing is that Redhat isn't targetting the same market, as say Fedora or Suse.
That's why they created Fedora, otherwise all you guys would be bitching about redhat using 2.4 on your desktops.
They have their OS certified by many 3rd party makers of propriatory software, such as Oracle. Stuff like that takes a lot more work then just slapping 2.6 into a OS and making sure that everything works.
Everything has to work the way Oracle (for example) expects it to work, and Oracle is only going to tell Redhat the minimal it is needed to get it running, since it's closed source.
Don't worry, Redhat isn't dropping behind, it's just that they've adopted a much more long term-style revision policy compared to other distros. When they switch to 2.6 it will be a relatively cutting edge version of 2.6.
Which should be pretty soon. Also PPC developement is going to be falling a bit behind x86 developement due to the relative popularity of the different platforms.
Why would you want to run OSX on these. IMHO Apple's greatest strength is the really awesome industrial design; and if I had an excuse to run OSX, I'd love the excuse to get Apples from Apple.
Are you suggesting the fortune 500 companies spending thousands of dollars on RHEL 3* deployments should have either expected a kernel less then 6 months old in the intial RHEL 3 release? Or perhaps that their shiny new product certified to keep component version numbers stable for 5 years suddenly do a major version kernel upgrade 6 months into the product life cycle?
* RHEL 3 is the only Red Hat distribution you could be talking about. All other RHEL versions came out before kernel 2.6, and FC2 and FC3 do use kernel 2.6. FC1 won't get it because FC2 is halfway through it's own life cycle (which means FC1 is old & busted).
Good thing the kernel's open source, then. There are things like XPostFacto which make OS X work on older Macs by providing the necessary drivers/etc and faking things as necessary, for instance.
1. The features amount to much, much, much more than just space.
2. Sorry for trying to be helpful.
3. Signing people up for crap is rude. None the less, GMail will helpfully filter the Spam using its handy, dandy, trainable, spam trap.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
From that link:
Support for very large volumes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 supports up to 1 TB.
WTF??? Am I the only person in the world that would consider an "enterprise" class OS in 2004 something that should be able to have an attached harddisk of more than 1 TB? Its difficult to even buy an array with less then 1 TB.
But, that doesn't mean that it won't boot g5 darwin.
too busy to read the TITLE? this is even lazier than me. RTFT.
No, because OSX does checks to look for Apple-specific hardware on boot.
Interestingly, if you boot OS X using Pear PC a message appears during verbose boot stating "Warning: Apple Mac I/O Self Test fails", but then continues to boot. It would seem that OS X knows it's not Mac hardware, but doesn't care.
They are not the same CPU, so its doubful OSX would run..
I Belive PPC is a subset of "Power", but i could easily be wrong on that part..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Why would you want to inflict a Big Brother email system on your friends?"
What's the big hubub about? Big Brother already scans ALL your email. Its called CARNIVOR. If you are so concerned about your privacy, perhaps you should stop using the net.
You obviously missed the story that 2.6 is NOT stable, and the whole 2.6 tree is never supposed to reach the level of stability. All version of Linux are -unstable now...
But perhaps more directly to the point... why should they use 2.6? The scheduler may be improved, but that alone isn't serious enough to warrant an upgrade.
There's still plenty of kernel modules that aren't working or just aren't stable on 2.6.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
ya, thats volumes though. i.e. a 1 terabyte /home
you can have a 10 terabyte array if you need too, and run redhat on it, but you'd have to have 10 partitions.
however i do see your point that it is pretty weak to have an enterprise class OS not be able to support >1TB filesystem
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
I wonder if IBM is releasing their compiler set for Linux as well. Even tho xlc (C compiler) was kinda crappy, xlC (C++ compiler) was one of the best I ever seen, expecially for not allowing programers to put too much crap on the code (printf on C++ ? Don't think so).
Same question regarding Teamconnection.
Then again, these may already be avaliable, and I'm just asking a dumb question.
morcego
On the first page you see after logging in a blue bar appears above your inbox listings saying:
;-)
You have 6 Gmail invitations. Invite a friend to join Gmail!
The last bit is a link.
I got my invites after about a week (less I think...), perhaps it's throughput based, seeing as I recived several megabytes of AVR development tools through email into the account.
Either that, or it's random. Whatever it is, at this rate the world and it's dog will have Gmail accounts before open signups begin...
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
wow, if i had modpoints i'd mod you up for the kickass slayer reference.
to bad you wouldnt get the karma though
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
The more people they sell "Enterprise" 2.4 to, the more people they can charge for an upgrade to "RedHat Voyager" with a 2.6 kernel.
Or for something running OS X...
It's a joke people...I own a powerbook.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
yippee... a contest I stand a chance of winning!!! seriously, I started my new job today and my workspace is rather sparse compared to those... but give it a week...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/mol/
http://www.maconlinux.org
This was mentioned in an article in the Wall Street Journal today. The article is regarding vendor-backing of LSB2. Near the end, the WSJ stated this product is meant to compete with Sun and HP workstations. Link to related story, as WSJ's requires subscription services.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Can a puma challenge a lion for king of the jungle?
Darwin does support PS/2, RS232 etc...it also supports pretty much any video card in an unaccelerated mode - which isn't that important in a server.
And, for what it is worth, OS X supports USB RS232/432 devices.
And, of course, there are the various virtual machines that will let you run OS X and Darwin under Windows - if they can virtualize those devices, no doubt it could be done on a pSeries.
OTOH, no doubt that the pSeries will be no cheaper than an XServe.
-S
For whatever reason IBM intentionally or un-intentionally will be pissing off their AIX customers by not certifying the hardware for AIX. Technically there's no reason for not doing this, financially they would take a hit. Currently a similarly powered machine for AIX is 3-6 times more money depending on the config...
Nice product, don't get me wrong, they're just going to be pissing off their best customers...the died in the wool "UNIX" customers.
My understanding of OS X server is that it is basically a bunch of really nice GUI wrappers for free utilities. So, if you really needed an IBM Power5 server, couldn't we assume that you wouldn't need the slick OS X server UI?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The post says
"This story from Infoworld.com talks about IBM's new low priced POWER5 based servers which will ship with Red Hat or Suse Linux, but not IBM's AIX."
Does a 'low priced' linux-only server without AIX mean that AIX actually is the reason for the higher pricing of the other IBM servers!?!
I can confirm this... PearPC always made me wonder why people AREN'T making mac clones right now!!! It's definately possible... Obviously i doubt you could get a special deal on os X or sell it advertising it that way, but nothing against you selling a ppc box with a retail copy of OS-X bundled with it...
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Apple closed their hardware specs again after a short period of opening up. Something about having hoped that other companies would eat PC market share and not their own. Right.
The better question here is: Is the IBM Power5 series truly open? If so, it should run any OS with support for that platform, if not now, but real soon. That would include *BSD, the open version of BeOS, or whatever Linux flavour you want.
If it's a closed back-room deal involving a closed OS loader, this would be more difficult, but considering SuSe is involved I would not be surprised; their willingness to sell out to the likes of Nvidia could be argued to have pushed back OSS/FSS support for NVidia for some time.
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
MacOS X does not use ROMs.
Only the classic Mac OS up through version 8 used onboard ROMs. Mac OS 9 (and maybe even 8.6) used a "software" ROM that was loaded in the filesystem. MacOS X does not use ROMs at all.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
I know you are kidding, but it probably would (with some work) boot OS/2. Before IBM killed it back in the 95/96 timeframe, there was a project to port OS/2 to the PowerPC that got to the alpha stage. It was based on a TRUE microkernel (no NT style pseudo-microkernels). Cool stuff.
The EULA that came with my copy of OS X Server says you aren't allowed to install the OS on non-Apple hardware. You'll have to call them and work out a special agreement.
You obviously missed the story that 2.6 is NOT stable, and the whole 2.6 tree is never supposed to reach the level of stability. All version of Linux are -unstable now...
And you obviously missed the fact they the "instability" of the 2.6 tree is API-level. Linus doesn't want to lock the kernel into a bad set of interfaces. No one (at least no one who RTFA) ever suggested that the 2.6 wouldn't build a stable binary, only that a new kernel make make old modules/programs/etc stop working.
We have an old RS-6000 server, model E30.
It is running AIX 4.1.5.
There is a vertical market application on it, that we have replaced by SAP in 1999, but the system still needs to be running because data stored in the application sometimes needs to be retrieved.
Now, the system is dying. Disks are failing (not yet fatal because of the mirroring). The maintenance contract has been stopped, as earlier it was believed that it would be redundant by now.
All our systems are now Intel-based and run Windows or Linux, we have no interest to buy new PowerPC hardware.
Is there some sulution to run this entire environment emulated under Linux?
A PowerPC emulator running on Intel, that can run AIX?
I have read about "PearPC" but it looks like it is targeted towards running Apple operating systems.
Any chance it would run AIX?
But I think you need to backup your position with more links
Seriously, the grandparent was implying that Apple gave kickbacks for links, so the parent just made a post of links. It's a joke, get it? (I see how it could be construed as not funny, but a troll?)
Less cheap crack. More (free) beer.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/13/1 332246&threshold=-1&tid=136&tid=218
Except the OS X EULA bars one from legally running it on the hardware. While of questionable legality, is certainly enough to expose any attempted clonemaker to a draining Apple lawsuit.
Unlike previous pSeries machines, the Power5 generation has no ISA bus. Hence there no directly controlled RS232, parallel, or PS/2 ports. For the keyboard one would use the embedded NEC USB 2.0 chipset.
While there is a serial port, using it for OS console won't work because it's abstracted through a new virtual-tty interface that OS X won't understand.
I'm skeptical that one could trick the OS into thinking there is a Apple-ROM since the device tree entry for the Apple-ROM would be verified by the OS driver. The device tree entry is merely a hint as to where to locate the ROM.
It is just irrelevant to the marketing initiative and the goal of IBM. Why the hell should IBM cares about the PowerPC on the desktop when Apple is already providing a solution? Go and buy Apple!
IBM is just unrolling the red carpet for Linux to enter enterprise data-centers in some of the most skeptical and demanding industries.
The most interesting feature is the virtualization engine on the four processors model. Given what it is costing to some banking customers per server on the floor, while some are idle most of the time and only justified because they need a "separated box for security reasons", this single feature will sell the box by tons. And I know a customer who would benefit right away from this to replace about 50 servers by two or three of these. And two-third of these servers are Sun boxes. IBM is likely to get the integration project using their virtualization engine, they will lost some money on the maintenance since the remaining third is IBM boxes, but they will get fresh new cash for the new boxes, the project and kick-out Sun. Anything else they could wish to have?
Achille Talon
Hop!
There is a big difference between a POWER5 chip and a POWERpc 970FX chip. The POWER5 chip will be able to similtainously run OSes on the same chip. There are some other cool technologies that go with the chip, but sifting through the IBM site to find this is not something I care to do tonight.
Is it full of sin?
hey!
The EULA for MacOS X specifically states that you are only allowed to install and run the software on "Apple branded" hardware.
Though nothing explicitly prevents you from building a Mac clone, it would be of little use since you wouldn't be able to legally install the OS on it. Unless of course you built clones with an Apple logo on them, but then you might as well hang a "Sue me for trademark infringement!" sign on your front door.
Near as I understand, we'll see 2.6 in RHEL 4. I think that's due Q1 or Q2 2005.
In the meantime, we've got backported O1 scheduler, most of the EXT3 speedups and fixes and a raft of other things.
At the moment, the only real killer problem for RHEL in the enterprise is the lack of a supported filesystem that will allow dynamic resizing. You have to unmount an ext3 volume before you can resize it, so it's not suitable for some volume management solutions. I believe that XFS will allow you to resize on the fly, but from what I've heard, there are no plans to support that at the moment.
... "Linux-only" didn't you understand ?
Since when are EULA binding?