Clive Bruton

Q: Xserve keyboard weirdness

This is not a question that can be answered by "unlock the Xserve". I have an Xserve 2,1, 2x2.8GHz quad core. When it boots it takes 10 seconds or more (perhaps up to 30 seconds) before I get a light on the USB optical (Apple) mouse. I can never get to intercept the boot process by holding the option key on the keyboard to choose the boot drive. This happens regardless of which of the three USB ports the keyboard and mouse are plugged in to. Of course the Xserve is unlocked. I've booted it into 10.5.8 Server, and unchecked the security option to enable locking on the keyboard and mouse - ie even if it were locked the keyboard and mouse should work. Generally it's not too much of a problem - but it is a bit of a pain when you want to be swapping start-up drives between 10.5/10.6 and later versions (well, at least 10.11), because the early OSs don't recognise the later OS drives as bootable. And I'd like to be able to use the option key at boot rather than pulling drives. And I'd like to rely on holding down the "C" key to get it to boot from an optical (of course I know you can do this by setting up the option on boot with the service button). Is this a "feature" of the Xserve, or do I just have a flakey one?

Posted on May 5, 2016 3:02 PM

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Q: Xserve keyboard weirdness

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