Xserve Is not Entering Firewire Target Disk mode

Question

Xserve Is not Entering Firewire Target Disk mode

Hi, I have a dual G5 Xserve with Panther server and wish to upgrade it to Tiger server. My Xserve is headless and has no available PCI slot for a video card, so I have tried putting it into Firewire target disk mode via front panel mode. I don't really know what it is doing, the fans speed up and various drive lights blink, but it never appears on the desktop of the G5 tower I have hooked it up to to do the install from. Is there any other way to get it to boot up into Firewire target disk mode other than using the front panel option? The only thing connected to the Xserve is an Xserve RAID via the fiber channel RAID card. Do I need to unhook the Xserve RAID, too? Any ideas would be appreciated. There's probably something I haven't already thought of. I have a second Xserve to do this same upgrade to and it's a dual G4 running Jaguar. But it is in use and I have to wait so I'd like to get it right with the newer Xserve first. TIA!

Posted on Sep 21, 2005 6:44 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 21, 2005 8:22 PM in response to Laura Kneppel

Just wanted to add that it shows up in System Profiler>Firewire as a Target Disk mode. But it is listed as Unknown Device. It does know that it is an AAPL maufactureed product. Is there something I need to enable on the Xserve
end? I do have a megaraid on there as well as the boot drive, but they are totally separate.

Thanks,
Laura

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Answer 2

Alex Geis

Level 2

462 points

Sep 22, 2005 3:04 AM in response to Laura Kneppel

Laura,
Just a thought... I notice you mentioned that you couldn't add a video card cause both your slots are taken, and that you have a fibre channel card for an xserve raid in one. Out of curisoity, do you have a hardware RAID card for internal g5 raid in the other? If so, that's your problem, as the hardware RAID card is unsupported in target disk mode.

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Answer 3

Sep 22, 2005 9:52 AM in response to Alex Geis

Hi Alex,
Yes you are absolutely correct. The other PCI slot contains a hardware RAID card. I was afraid that there might perhaps be a compatibility problem with that setup, even though the boot drive is not configured as part of the RAID. I believe it is still controlled by that card, though.

Since my G5 xserve is headless and I cannot use target disk mode to install Tiger (I was hoping to re-initialize the startup drive and create a system partition as part of the upgrade) is there another way to do the install/upgrade? Of course ARD does not let me get to that xserve if I boot from the DVD-ROM. And I have tried to ssh to it without success while booted from the DVD (obviously it is not reading the network config files on the hard drive.

I have to admit this is my weakest link when it comes to headless xserves.

Thank you for confirming my worst suspicions about the hardware RAID card, though! That will save me from trying to troubleshoot something I can't fix.

Laura K.

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Answer 4

Alex Geis

Level 2

462 points

Sep 22, 2005 11:13 AM in response to Laura Kneppel

Hey Laura,

Your best bet for initalizing would be to simply boot up off your DVD and connect to the machine via terminal. The whole process is mentioned around page 70-80 of yoru getting started with 10.4 manual which includes system installation, but here's a quick list of how you want to go about it:

Boot the system off the dvd (I usually plug a keyboard in via USB and hold down the C key even though supposedly pulling the drive on boot and putting back in works too, but has never worked for me)

Also, make sure you know where the machine's going to end up. Since its the DVD OS, your IP will most likely change. It lieks to default to DHCP, so it would be easiest if you have a DHCP server somewhere on your network that can send it IPs and EVEN BETTER if you can assign a static IP via MAC address.

Once you know it's IP, ssh root@IP, and use the first 8 serial number characters as the password to connect. (If you have no idea where your box is, gte it out of server monitor before you reboot... i had some issues with that last time 😉

Once you're in, you can run diskutil to intialize and setup partitions as you plase. Then, there are one or two easy lines that you have to type into initiate installation to the drive. Again, all the info on installing from command line can be found right in yoru system manual, and its pretty straight fwd 🙂

Best of luck!

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Answer 5

Sep 22, 2005 11:33 AM in response to Alex Geis

Thank you Alex!!

I thought the instructions ought to be in the user manual and that terminal was the way to go. Looks pretty straightforward but it is always reassuring to hear it from someone who has done it and knows potential pitfalls.

I will let you know how it goes.

Laura K.

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