Re: [seul-edu] Linux & Mac OS X Server integration

[Jack Johnson <jack@dcsd.k12.ak.us>]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2000 01:12:45 -0600 (CST) michaelh@utdallas.edu (Michael A
Hamblin) wrote:

>I recently was able to convince my department to free up a little cash for
>a G4 and a copy of MacOS X Server, to do precisly the kinds of tests you
>are trying and add the Sun factor into the mix. As yet I have not been
>able to load MacOS X Server, but from reading the documentation my
>impressions are that it is NeXTSTEP with a Mac Platnium look. Given those
>impressions, a few possibilities for experimentation lay before me.

The G4 servers ship with a different version of MOSXS (like 1.2, I believe)
which is not available otherwise.  You may want to contact Apple and see if
they'll ship you a different CD.

>5) Debian 68k is a zero priority project for me right now, though that's
>mostly because I couldn't get the hardware to cooperate with me. I still
>have to full distribution on a box at work to install if I get a chance to
>try it again.

Debian/m68k is nice, if not a little slow.  X can be downright painful.  It's
sensitive to different NICs, though.  The standard Apple Ethernet on a Quadra
700 gets buffer overflows continuously unless you recompile the kernel.

We were fortunate enough to have a ton of old NuBus Cabletron NICs donated to
us.  It seems they all had slightly different chipsets on them, and of the
half-dozen I swapped out only two worked, but they worked exceptionally well.

Debian/m68k also has rebooting issues on some machines.  You'll get the "Sad
Mac" chimes after a soft reboot, though it clears up on a hard reboot.  My
workaround (which seems to help 50% of the time) was to switch from using the
Penguin bootloader extention to putting an alias in the Startup Items folder.

If anyone's looking for something to handle DNS, let students bang on, or for
a remote site, the IIci (comparable to a 386, for you PC folks) is perfect,
and cheap.

-Jack Johnson