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Technology (Apple) Software Technology Linux

Linux Supporting G5 Liquid Cooling System 109

Posted by pudge 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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Linux Supporting G5 Liquid Cooling System More

Linux Supporting G5 Liquid Cooling System

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  • Ah hah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by avalys ( 221114 ) * on Thursday October 21, 2004 @12:10AM (#10582885)
    So, this would be perfect for those moments when you're on a Mac and need access to a Unix system for some reason.

    Oh, wait...

  • Sweet (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Erect Horsecock ( 655858 )
    As soon as my dual 2.5 gets here I had planned to throw linux on it as well, but I didn't know about this problem. Might wait a few more days then...

    Is anybody booting their dual 2.5 with linux RIGHT NOW thats having a problem with this? Is it a show stopper or just more of an annoyance thing.

    • Re:Sweet (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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:Sweet (Score:5, Informative)

        by Monster Zero ( 58806 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @01:57AM (#10583472) Homepage
        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:Sweet (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          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:Sweet (Score:2, Informative)

      by LiENUS ( 207736 )
      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.

    • NSW Signature! (Score:4, Funny)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @10:36AM (#10586564)
      dude! not fscking funny!

      I'm sitting in the corner of a classroom full of kids checking out slashdot while a computer finishes imaging, and i checked-out your sig. You should really let people know that your sig-link has Work Unsafe images on it, not say "I made a funny".

  • The point (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MacFury ( 659201 ) <me.johnkramlich@com> on Thursday October 21, 2004 @12:28AM (#10583011) Homepage
    Not to troll...but what is the point of running Linux on the Mac, aside from the "because we can!" which is a valid reason. :-)

    • Re:The point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zachary Kessin ( 1372 ) <zkessin@gmail.com> on Thursday October 21, 2004 @12:44AM (#10583102) Homepage Journal
      I've wondered that as well. I have 3 computers on my desk, 2 run Mac OS 10.3, and the 3rd runs linux. I access the linux via VNC from one or the other of the macs. The thing is that there are a number of apps on the mac that are just better than anything else out there, at least as far as some of the things I want to do. I have never found linux apps that are as good as iTunes or iPhoto.

      • Re:VNC? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @01:05AM (#10583213)
        Why use VNC? Wouldn't this [apple.com] do the job just as well (or better)?

        • Re:VNC? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Zachary Kessin ( 1372 )
          Well i use both to be honest. VNC has a few major features I like. For one thing I can get a full KDE Or Gnome Desktop. I can also shut down the mac and leave the KDE session running. I can also move the session between any of several screens.

          On the minus side the way I have things right now I only have 15 bit color over VNC, when I tried to put it to 24 bit mode it gave me very strange colors.

    • Re:The point (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cross platform compatibility. If you have an application for which you have the source code, it's advantageous to be able to run the OS on an arbitrary hardware platform. Whether that hardware be Alpha, MIPS, Sparc, POWER, PowerPC, x86, 6502, or whatever, if the OS will run on it, it's a relatively minor thing to take the source code and recompile (assuming it doesn't have endian problems or embedded assembly).

      This means that if you can get better bang for your buck out of PowerPC (aka Xserve RAID) hardwa

      • I'm no expert on Linux PPC, but it seems like your example is moot.

        Last I checked, the Linux PPC kernel doesn't even support FireWire, so I would be very surprised if it supports the fibre channel bus you need to talk to an XServe RAID. And if you take the (admittedly very inexpensive) XServe RAID out of the equation, XServe hardware doesn't seem so cheap anymore.

        • Re:The point (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          you gave a look to the ppc kernel AGES ago :) Firewire support has been there since early 2.4 release, at least.
        • well, the xraid itself is not reason to buy an xserve as the xraid is desiged to be cross platform. so you can use the xraid with your dell server quite happily. the management app is java and connectivity is fibre channel and ethernet so no major cross platform issues.

          I've read of some people buying xraids to use with pc systems as it's just a very good and cheap storage subsystem.

          dave

        • Re:The point (Score:5, Informative)

          by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @07:15AM (#10584707) Homepage
          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.

    • How much does an OS X license cost?

    • Re:The point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fsterman ( 519061 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @01:01AM (#10583194) Homepage
      Because I need to install Linux on an original All-In-One G3 [theapplemuseum.com] (_right_ before the iMac, educational release only) for a server :) Can't do with OS X! Custom apps for Linux, especially Linux kernal extensions. PPC is a pretty powerful processor, clustering it with Linux is easier and less expensive than OS X. Uhh, and more :)
      • The AIO is the *wrong* solution for clustering. Even with the monitor off, it generates a lot more heat than say a PMG3 of the same era. But as a head-unit for a cluster, it wouldn't be too bad I guess.

    • Re:The point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @01:34AM (#10583327) Homepage Journal
      It's an obvious combination for somebody who prefers PPC architecture to Pentium, but doesn't want to deal with MacOS. Mac diehards would never concede that anybody can design a user interface better than Apple -- but some of us are thoroughly adjusted to an X- or Windows-style user interface, and don't find it worthwhile to retrain ourselves.
      • So, recompile your apps and use a X server?
        • Did you miss what I said about the Mac UI?
          • OK. So you like Mac UI's? Use it.

            Or do you mean you don't like Mac UI's? Well guess what? It's the same app whether you recompiled it or not. People are actually complaining about this for firefox - they don't follow Mac's standards for accelerators. Again, recompile + X.

      • Re:The point (Score:3, Informative)

        by pauljlucas ( 529435 )
        ... 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?
        • You do realize you can run X-Windows under MacOS X out of the box, right?
          In which case you still have the MacOS user interface. I'm not going to repeat what I said on that topic.
          And you can install KDE, Gnome, or whatever ....
          So major hacking of MacOS is an alternative to replacing it with Linux. Fair enough. But that doesn't mean that nobody will prefer the replacement to the hacking.

          • Re:The point (Score:4, Insightful)

            by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @07:52AM (#10584833) Homepage
            "And you can install KDE, Gnome, or whatever ...."

            So major hacking of MacOS is an alternative to replacing it with Linux. Fair enough. But that doesn't mean that nobody will prefer the replacement to the hacking.

            Oh, please! It's hardly "major hacking". Installing KDE on top of the X11 that comes with OS X is no more difficult (probably less) than installing KDE, X11, and Linux on the same Mac.

            If you prefer Linux over Darwin (which is what we're really talking about at this point) that's a perfectly reasonable preference. (I'm planning to use Yellow Dog Linux on some old Apple hardware I want to use as a firewall, simply because I know how to do it with Linux and I'd have to start at square one figuring out how to do it with a BSD system.) Trying to support that choice by complaining about the OS X UI which is rather easily replaceable is not.

          • So major hacking of MacOS is an alternative to replacing it with Linux.
            Uh, no. Among other easy ways: install Fink, then install KDE or whatever in a few commands, and it's done. No hacking. It really it quite trivial.

            Why don't you actually do some investigation and know what you're talking about before writing?

      • but some of us are thoroughly adjusted to an X- or Windows-style user interface

        You can run X11, and KDE, etc. on Mac OS X no problem.

        No, you can't run MS Windows on a Mac. But that really wouldn't make sense.
        • Actually, you can. But that's beside the point. If you really want to know the point, try reading my post again.
          • It's an obvious combination for somebody who prefers PPC architecture to Pentium, but doesn't want to deal with MacOS. Mac diehards would never concede that anybody can design a user interface better than Apple -- but some of us are thoroughly adjusted to an X- or Windows-style user interface, and don't find it worthwhile to retrain ourselves.

            You can do many things with different architectures. It's a matter of cost/benefit. For me it's not worth putting up with the complexity of Linux installation/main

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @06:48AM (#10584611)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • That would be because only one company ever did, and Apple bought them for $400M.

          No, no no. Palm owns Be.

          Oh, you meant NeXT...
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • I wouldn't say it was necessarily better or worse - but it had different hang-ups than the Mac OS of the day. There were some areas that I think Be did much better - interface responsiveness, live filesystem queries, and MIME filetypes versus a the 'proprietary' type/creator system. (Granted, the type/creator codes were *great* but BeOS was more in-step with the emerging Internet world.)

              [And anyone that seriously contends that the NeXT OS of the day was better than the Mac OS is mentally deficient.]
              • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                • I actually have. I still don't agree that is was better, from an end-user-experience level, than the classic Mac OS.

                  Now, what OS X has turned it into, has definitely added something - but I'll also concede that mixing two such disparate OS heritages into one 'experience' is prone to inconsistency, which is still fairly apparent in OS X.
                • Granted, the type/creator codes were *great*

                  No, they weren't. They were a major PITA on a daily basis for me, from 1984 through 1989 (which is when I swtiched to NeXTSTEP)

                  In addition, I would still contend that the type/creator methodology was great for its ability to associate a specific file of a type with one application while another file of the same type could be associated with another application was great. [Apologies for nonsensical run-on sentence.] I wish there had been something in the basic
        • Ahem, he said user interface, not API.
    • If you only run open source apps so why not. Why learn another OS if Linux already do what you need. From a *nix standpoint Linux pretty mouch stomps all over OS X too.

      • Re:The point (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rb4havoc ( 822483 )
        You say that, but I've been using a Mac since the late 80s, and whenever I went to install Linux recently on my PowerBook, I had some diehard Linux users ask me why I wanted to do that. Apparently they think OS X is better...

    • Re:The point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by byolinux ( 535260 ) * on Thursday October 21, 2004 @05:48AM (#10584382) Journal
      GNU/Linux is free software. Perhaps you only want to run ONLY free software on a very fast, well engineered computer?

      That's a reason why.

    • Re:The point (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nathanh ( 1214 )
      Not to troll...but what is the point of running Linux on the Mac, aside from the "because we can!" which is a valid reason. :-)

      Because I prefer Linux (honest) and Apple's hardware is really nice. Fortunately I can get the best of both worlds. Viva LinuxPPC.

    • Though the Anonymous Coward post explains it with good reasoning (Cross platform compatibility...), I think there is a secondary reason why Linux users would be excited about another PC configuration on which to install Linux that is a little alien to the typical Mac user.

      At a Linux meeting I attended a while back a woman (an ex-windows user) asked the group, "about how much time one should allocate to installing a Linux network of four or five workstations in a new accounting office: an afternoon, a da

    • Consider the more highly technical where you don't need a consumer oriented GUI and where you have an application whose algorithms are well suited to Altivec. For example the US Navy's sonar image processing [slashdot.org].

  • not hardware controled!? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bjarthur123 ( 684007 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @02:24AM (#10583616)
    do i understand correctly that the fans and liquid-cooling system are not controlled by hardware? so if your OS crashes or otherwise malfunctions, then your CPU could overheat? does this seem like a really bad way to engineer things to anyone else?

    • Re:not hardware controled!? (Score:5, Informative)

      by fyonn ( 115426 ) <dave@fyonn.net> on Thursday October 21, 2004 @02:57AM (#10583764) Homepage
      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

      • ...which really doesn't address the grandparent poster's concern. Obviously the OS overrides the bios, but what happens if there's a problem with the OS? Considering how this story is about support in Linux for the cooling system, I can't believe you got modded up.

        • Noise (Score:2, Informative)

          by xiaodidi ( 678443 )
          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.

          • Re:Noise (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Quobobo ( 709437 )
            No, no, no. We're not talking about the OS failing completely, but about it operating incorrectly. Say that it messes up and causes the fans to spin much lower than they should (or not at all), causing massive overheating. I know there's safeguards for when the fans aren't under OS control, but what about when they are and there's an OS problem?

            It's posssible that the firmware will override the OS in such a situation, but I've never heard anything about something like that.
            • Looking at my Xserve, it's hard to imagine how the OS could fail to control the heat. There are temperature sensors everywhere. I can check the temperature at various points inside the enclosure, e.g. at the CPU, at the DIMMs, etc., and get a numeric and graphic report from a software application. On the other hand, when the OS doesn't load, as it happened once, the fans start spinning full blast automatically.

              Assuming a desktop G5 has similar heat controls, I would think that

              1) the OS can control very
              • 1) the OS can control very well the heat, if it's working and properly designed

                Just read the article: "This version (#4) fixes a bug with the backside fan doing crazy things, it appears to work properly on the dual 2.5Ghz now."

                I think simply expecting all sofware to perform flawlessly is a bad idea when you're talking about something that could damage your hardware.
                • How would having the control in hardware solve the problem of the controls being corrupt? Hardware can fail just as easily as software can.

            • Re:Noise (Score:4, Informative)

              by fyonn ( 115426 ) <dave@fyonn.net> on Thursday October 21, 2004 @08:08AM (#10584898) Homepage

              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

              • how it determines this I don't know, and I suspect few people outside apple do

                Well I could guess that the system cycles updating retrieving and sending back controls to the firmware. If the firmware fails to receive after a certain time it would fall back to default mode. If this is the case then any OS that does not know how to control the hardware would be running with a fan full blast.

            • Re:Noise (Score:5, Informative)

              by Lars T. ( 470328 ) <{Lars.Traeger} {at} {googlemail.com}> on Thursday October 21, 2004 @01:37PM (#10589521) Journal
              Hardware: Power Mac G5 Developer Note: Fan Controller [apple.com]

              [...] 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.

  • It's not as interesting as running linux on a ratty copy of Moby Dick. Slow it down? The chip is sacred!

  • Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Thursday October 21, 2004 @10:56AM (#10586885)
    is this like those other times when people have gotten linux running on their Palm or Xbox or clock radio?

    I am not trying to flame but I just don't see the point - OS X is BSD. You've got X11. you can run all sorts of apps from the OS X command line (from apache to fink to vi) so what's the appeal of running linux?

    All I coud figure is the desktop environment.
    • I think your new here. The obvious answer is "why not?"

      • Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)

        by amichalo ( 132545 )
        I think your new here

        I think you're new here. But let's do the math for fun.

        800770
        - 132545
        --------
        668225

        668225 / 132545 = 5.04

        Yes, it would appear you're more than five time newer in fact. Not that anyone is trying to quantify 'newbeeness'.

        But to qualify the 'newbeeness', I took a look at your previous posts and I would say that you are still in search of an elusive score of 5 to improve the old Karma. Hint: you will have to do more than post "why not?" to get someone to mod you 'funny' or 'interestin
        • He did use "your" incorrectly like a true veteran, though.

          800k Slashdot IDs? I have five or six I've scrapped. I wonder how many of those are active.

    • "I am not trying to flame but I just don't see the point - OS X is BSD. You've got X11. you can run all sorts of apps from the OS X command line (from apache to fink to vi) so what's the appeal of running linux?"

      Nerd cred. See, for a while it was cool to dual-boot Linux and Windows, but then all the nerds got out of college and bought a second PC. So then it became cool to run Linux and just run Windows on an old PC for running Quicken, MS Money, or updating the all important resume in MS-Word format. But

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)

      by mdarksbane ( 587589 )
      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 i

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by amichalo ( 132545 )
        okay, I'll give your #2 a bit of validity, but as for #1, this article is about Linux on the liquid cooled dual processor G5 - so saying Linux is useful for a box that can barely run OS X won't apply to this box.

        as for #2 - is the Linux interface (KDE, Gnome, watver) so 'familiar' and impressive that someone would take all the time to port the OS to PPC? I mean, I have used Linux in various forms for several years, though only ever as dual boot, and I must say that savge Redhat 9, I thought the distributio

        • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by mdarksbane ( 587589 )
          Yeah, interface is all about preference. Personally, I agree with you, but I've been using macs as my preferred platform for years.

          I don't think it's mostly about the graphical interface, though. It's more the command line stuff, and the programs you're used to having. Sure, a lot of them are available for OS X, but not all, and often not in quite as nice of a form, or the configuration files being where you're used to them, and working how you want. I'd say it's the same reason people prefer Linux's vario

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