Linux Supporting G5 Liquid Cooling System

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Linux Supporting G5 Liquid Cooling System

Posted by pudge on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @04:07PM from the cooooooooool dept.

Sandor writes "Apple's G5 is selling well and this seems to have helped the development of the Linux kernel on the ppc64 platform: shortly after the shipment of the dual G5 with the new liquid cooling system, it seems that Linux kernel is going to support it really soon."

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Horse shit by Erect+Horsecock · 2004-10-20 16:28 · Score: 5, Informative

The only thing apple will drop the warranty from if you install linux on it is the iPod. If you put linux on your mac and have problems with it they wont provide software support, but will still cover the hardware. ihbt

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1. Re:Horse shit by tverbeek · 2004-10-20 23:58 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Similarly, our Apple rep (showing off the insides of the new G5 iMac) explained that if you put a bigger hard drive in it, Apple simply won't cover the hard drive, and if the hard drive catches fire and melts the rest of the system they won't cover the damage. But the rest of your hardware is still under warranty.
  
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  http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Re:Sweet by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 17:02 · Score: 3, Informative

I've had MANY problems running linux (be it Gentoo, Debian, or YDL 3.0.1... I've tried pretty much anything with a PPC or PPC64 port) on either the Dual 1.8 or the Dual 2.0 in the newer generations of G5s. I can't recall ever having gotten one to successfully boot from any ISO available online.

If YDL 4 is able to boot and install successfully, I'll happily go out and purchase a boxed set; I just want to test it first. Too bad it won't be 'released' for a bit :-\ I'm very anxious to get it working.
Re:VNC? by Bastian · 2004-10-20 17:05 · Score: 4, Informative

Why use VNC? Wouldn't this do the job just as well (or better)?
Re:Sweet by Monster+Zero · 2004-10-20 17:57 · Score: 5, Informative

I know that this is tangential to the upstream posts about problems with Linux on the Apple G5s, but I wanted to at least add the following:
My automated installs of SuSE Enterprise Linux 9.0 on the dual PowerPC 970 (G5) IBM JS20 Blades work very very well. One of my peers installed several from the CD media without incident as well (except the boot partion has to be of type PrEP) while I was working on setting up the infrastructure for the auto installs.
If you can get the academic discount and happen to have IBM PowerPC970 equipment, I highly recommend SuSE SLES9.
Re:The point by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 18:04 · Score: 1, Informative

you gave a look to the ppc kernel AGES ago :) Firewire support has been there since early 2.4 release, at least.
Re:Sweet by LiENUS · 2004-10-20 18:14 · Score: 2, Informative

The article makes it seem like its an issue with the fans, it also appears that the patch will be submitted to linus within a few days so i would expect it in 2.6.10.
Re:not hardware controled!? by fyonn · 2004-10-20 18:57 · Score: 4, Informative

I don't know for a fact, but I imagine the liquid cooled system works the same way as the fans do in the currn g5's. the OS software overrides the bios control. the bios control on it's own will run all the fans at maximum (loud) speed, so without software support for the cooling system in linux, it'll sound like a jet engine.

dave
Re:The point by pauljlucas · 2004-10-20 19:27 · Score: 2, Informative

... some of us are thoroughly adjusted to an X- or Windows-style user interface, and don't find it worthwhile to retrain ourselves.
You do realize you can run X-Windows under MacOS X out of the box, right? And you can install KDE, Gnome, or whatever your favorite X-Windows window manager is and run it in rooted mode so you couldn't even tell it was running MacOS X, right? Right?

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Re:The point by Onan · 2004-10-20 19:41 · Score: 2, Informative

$0 with every mac.
Noise by xiaodidi · 2004-10-20 22:50 · Score: 2, Informative

If it's like the Xserve, in the absense of OS control, the fans will run at full blast (as mentioned by the previous poster). This is unbearably loud in the case of the Xserve, as I have experienced. It's probably bad for the fans, which will eventually fail. So if the analogy with the Xserve holds, you better not do it. You can try for fun for a few minute.
1. Re:Noise by fyonn · 2004-10-21 00:08 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  well, I had some overheating probs with my g5 once (apple fixed them for me) and I'd come to my machine in the morning, the screen was blank and the fans were on "jet fighter" mode, which implies to me that if the OS stops taking an active interest in the fans then the firmware will step in and solve the problem the only way it knows how (max out all the fans). certainly the machine was unharmed when I rebooted it, nic and cool in fact :)
  
  how it determines this I don't know, and I suspect few people outside apple do (unless it's a technical document in the archive), but if osx finds some way to crash badly and lets the fans stop, or not go fast enough etc, then you'll have some comeback to apple. if it happens while you're using linux then I suspect you're SOL. however, I would imagine that if linux fails to control the fans properly then the firmware would again step in to save the day.
  
  it might simply be a case of, if the internal temp gets too high then the firmware maxxs all the fans
  
  the desktop g5 doesn't have quite as many temp sensors as I thikn the xserve does (cpu in and out, per cpu, drive bay, motherboard, exhaust and... umm think thats it)
  
  dave
2. Re:Noise by Lars+T. · 2004-10-21 05:37 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Hardware: Power Mac G5 Developer Note: Fan Controller
  [...] If the FCU does not receive an update from the operating system within two minutes, it begins to ramp up the speed of the fans to full speed.
  
  --
  Lars T.
  To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Re:The point by nathanh · 2004-10-20 23:15 · Score: 4, Informative

Last I checked, the Linux PPC kernel doesn't even support FireWire,

Uhh, works fine for me. External firewire HDD hooked up to PowerBook G4 running Debian.
Re:Sweet by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 16:56 · Score: 1, Informative

Well, of course. Linux is the primary OS for the IBM blades.

FWIW, "G5" is an Apple-ism. In IBM-land it refers to mainframes, not PowerPC chips.
Re:Why? by mdarksbane · 2004-10-21 17:26 · Score: 2, Informative

There are a few reasons.

1) It's an old mac that barely runs OS X. If you stick a fresh copy of Gentoo on it, especially with a minimalistic window manager, you can get much better responsiveness than on X. I believe it's pretty much the only way to get smooth DivX video on a G3 400 mhz and lower (and even then, you have to play a bit). This also comes into play in a server situation, when you don't need all the niceness of OS X, just some speed and stability.

2) It's what you're familiar with. Sure, OS X is BSD-based and has a nice interface, but it does handle some of the configuration differently from whatever version of linux you might be used to. There's also the concern that not all *nix apps build for OS X, or build easily even if they do. Portage, I know, is one tool that one of my Linux-on-mac using friends refuses to do without. There's also the issues that some people prefer a very minimalistic window manager, which you can *do* on top of OS X, through X11, but you lose most of the speed advantages of doing so.

So, in short, there are some very specific reasons that a very linux-ie person might like to run that on their new ibook or G5 instead of OSX.