[ydl-gen] YDL 5 installation on Xserve

[Derick Centeno]

Hi Atro, I've been following this thread and interspersed my comments
following yours...

> 
> Easier said than done.  YDL 5.0.2 refuses to recognize the external
> FireWire drive (a Maxtor 5000DV) as anything it will agree to install
> to.  I've tried having the drive connected when I boot the machine
> as well as plugging it in afterwards; I've disconnected the internal
> IDE hard drives; I've made sure that sbp2 is loaded, that I see the
> kernel messages related to plugging in the drive, and I've even hand-
> made the b,8,0 /dev entry for sda (which YDL didn't create when it
> loaded sbp2 and the drive was present) so I could run pdisk on it.
> Everything is working fine as far as the hardware goes.  YDL just
> won't play with me.

I'd like to suggest something rather sneaky (based on many years of
experience in operations within gargantuan class datacenters), switch
the Maxtor 5000DV into a different external housing with a Firewire
port. As far as I can discover the Maxtor 5000DV is discontinued.  If
you are amenable to the idea of opening it up and find out what the size
of the HD actually is (hopefully it may be 2.5 inches) a modern external
housing such as that provided by macsales.com
(http://eshop.macsales.com/item-specials/Other%20World%20Computing/MOTGFW400/)
could be a solution.  Maybe YDL would see it after such a switch...

For all the work you've already done, and what Kai and his team offered
to work on, my suggestion is rather simplistic.

> I suppose I haven't tried hand-loading sd_mod yet...
> 
> But this is supposed to be Apple...  Easy to work with and no Linux
> nerd tweaking required, right? :-)

Actually, no.  Apple has been notorious for not abiding by any current
hardware standards in application at the time; they've always gone
their own way. Of course, for consumers or users attracted to the new
and shiny this or that appear to believe the Apple device wonderful...
however on the operations/hardware side finding standard available
parts to replace the hardware guts of nearly any Apple device from
anyone other than Apple is akin to the labor of Sisyphus. It's always
been that way.
 
Just one more thing, regarding Apple's marketing magic.  They've been
able to convince consumers/users of the Apple way of doing things while
avoiding clarifying the effort of others which they increasingly rely
upon -- the real-world foundation provided by open source Free BSD and
Linux whose effort provides to all users unprecedented access and
control of all kinds of hardware, including the CPU, which Apple has
consistently and historically (even up to this day) isolated users from.

One could discuss this as an approach or philosophy issue, but in my
thinking "ease of use" doesn't equate with obfuscation of function. 

Just my $.02.

========
 "If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often
think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of
music. ... I get most joy in life out of music."  

"What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester
Viereck," for the October 26, 1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
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