Impact of a KVM on installing OpenSolaris on a Mac Mini The IOGear KVM I have is both a lifesaver and the bane of my existence. OpenSolaris does not recognize the Apple wired keyboard under GRUB. (And it also fails to recognize it under Ubuntu.) If I use the KVM, I can use the keyboard.
So that is how it is saving my life.
It is slowly killing me because of tech support. The two add-on cable clusters are not working. IOGear says it is because I am using HDMI converters on the Minis. Strangely enough, it does not matter on the embedded cable clusters. I finally found a machine in the house which has a pure VGA connection. Guess what, the cables fail to work there as well.
I'm frustrated because the tech support crew is not listening to me. They are fixated on the HDMI converters and not on the fact that the box is broken. I've just got them to admit that the thing is broken. Now I get to send them the unit and they'll send me something back, sometime.
I think I'll head over to the Apple store to see if they have anything.
I've done enough swapping of cables to be undaunted about having 3 computers and only 1 KB, mouse, and monitor. Anyway, once the systems have OpenSolaris on them, they should run smooth, right?
Going from a MBR back to a GUID partition table to reinstall OS X In Getting together a pNFS storage community I explored
putting OpenSolaris on a Mac Mini. Here I'm going to talk about reversing that.
First things, the mini I am working with seems to have a screwy interaction with both my IOGear kvm and my wired Mac keyboard. The other two minis I have work fine with both.
I'm reverting back to see if I can get the machine to work with the kvm in the native OS.
Okay, pop in your installation disk - in my case it is Tiger. The first thing you will notice
is that the install can not find a disk to install on to. Start Disk Utility, then:
- Select your disk. It should be the 120G drive.
- Select partition.
- Select options
- At this point, either reset to default or change from MBR to GUID partition table
And then Bob is your uncle! At this point you can change the partition to 1 huge one and select
your other options. Then partition it. If you skip the steps to change to a GUID table, then this
partitioning will not work. Once done, exit Disk Utility and go about a normal
install.
Note, I bet I could have used Disk Utility to have avoided Ubuntu when going the other route.
