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Balrog76 said:
goodluck with that! i have an e5200 installed myself. let us know how it goes.
Lion Server on an HP Mediasmart EX485
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goodluck with that! i have an e5200 installed myself. let us know how it goes.
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counter5th said:
One thing I had to do when I was running Lion Server on my HP Mediasmart server was that I had to disable the USB recovery feature, otherwise it would not boot of the OS X Disk. You would need a KVM cable for that. Just a thought.
Good luck
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Hi all - thanks for this guide.
I'd been frustrated with trying to make my EX485 work with my Macs since the day it arrived from HP, and the reality is it just didn't. Time Machine was a disaster, and even using it for bulk storage was miserable. Super-slow transfer speeds, and I had endless trouble with files that were 'open' and wouldn't close, so couldn't be copied, moved or deleted, and filename problems, and, and, and.
I finally gave up, and declared the thing a loss. I'd been thinking of trying to Hackintosh it for a couple years now, but the last time I seriously looked at it, the drivers and tools to make it fly weren't there, at least in an approachable way.
I followed this guide, upgraded to a E5200 SLAY7 CPU and 4 gigs of RAM, installed Lion on to a 1tb drive in a USB cradle, then updated the install to 10.7.4, restarted from my host mac's drive, installed the current version of Multibeast with Easybeast, System Utilities and Drivers and Bootloaders checked. As noted above, I set up my administrator account, enabled screen sharing, file sharing, remote login and remote management in the Sharing control panel.
I attempted to restart my iMac with this disk as the boot drive, but got an immediate kernel panic.
However, when I put the drive into the EX485, I got a full start the very first time, and it's working perfectly. Total time elapsed, including the CPU replacement, was about 3 hours. If I did it a second time, I could probably do it in under two hours.
I've put in two 3TB WD caviar green drives, concatenated them into one large drive with Disk Utility's RAID tools, and now have a lovely Hackintosh server with a one terabyte drive, a six terabyte drive, and VERY fast transfer speeds,
With WHS 2.5, it was rare to get copy speeds over my GigE wired network of over 5MB/s. Running OS X on the upgraded server, I have a 1TB transfer (my iTunes folder) running, and it's a nice steady 90-100 MB/s, which is outstanding for a real-world network copy rate. Finder says it'll be 2-3 hours, which is 5 gigabytes/minute if it goes the full three hours.
Long story short, I'm THRILLED. Thanks so much for the guide, and taking the arrows.
I'd been frustrated with trying to make my EX485 work with my Macs since the day it arrived from HP, and the reality is it just didn't. Time Machine was a disaster, and even using it for bulk storage was miserable. Super-slow transfer speeds, and I had endless trouble with files that were 'open' and wouldn't close, so couldn't be copied, moved or deleted, and filename problems, and, and, and.
I finally gave up, and declared the thing a loss. I'd been thinking of trying to Hackintosh it for a couple years now, but the last time I seriously looked at it, the drivers and tools to make it fly weren't there, at least in an approachable way.
I followed this guide, upgraded to a E5200 SLAY7 CPU and 4 gigs of RAM, installed Lion on to a 1tb drive in a USB cradle, then updated the install to 10.7.4, restarted from my host mac's drive, installed the current version of Multibeast with Easybeast, System Utilities and Drivers and Bootloaders checked. As noted above, I set up my administrator account, enabled screen sharing, file sharing, remote login and remote management in the Sharing control panel.
I attempted to restart my iMac with this disk as the boot drive, but got an immediate kernel panic.
However, when I put the drive into the EX485, I got a full start the very first time, and it's working perfectly. Total time elapsed, including the CPU replacement, was about 3 hours. If I did it a second time, I could probably do it in under two hours.
I've put in two 3TB WD caviar green drives, concatenated them into one large drive with Disk Utility's RAID tools, and now have a lovely Hackintosh server with a one terabyte drive, a six terabyte drive, and VERY fast transfer speeds,
With WHS 2.5, it was rare to get copy speeds over my GigE wired network of over 5MB/s. Running OS X on the upgraded server, I have a 1TB transfer (my iTunes folder) running, and it's a nice steady 90-100 MB/s, which is outstanding for a real-world network copy rate. Finder says it'll be 2-3 hours, which is 5 gigabytes/minute if it goes the full three hours.
Long story short, I'm THRILLED. Thanks so much for the guide, and taking the arrows.
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deanster, good to hear that someone are in luck 
I installed the new cpu today. The e8400. And did a full reinstall. No luck
I am out of ideas, except for buying a KVM cable. Can anyone tell me what to buy?
Deanster. Did you do anything apart from following the guide?
I installed the new cpu today. The e8400. And did a full reinstall. No luck
I am out of ideas, except for buying a KVM cable. Can anyone tell me what to buy?
Deanster. Did you do anything apart from following the guide?
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Ok, been trying all day still no luck.
Options tried today.
1. Tried ned "install host" a core 2 duo macbookpro (thought it might help to shift to same cpu architecture as in the ex485).
2. Tried new boot harddisk.
No luck. I am starting to suspect the USB boot, or speed stepping BIOS settings. But without one of those legendary KVM cables, I can't confirm it.
Is there a way I can change the BIOS settings without the cable? Maybe flash it via a USB stick that auto runs the flash or something like that? Anyone have experience in that direction? I don't think I can get hold of a KVM cable, since I live in Denmark, and can't seem to find the cables anywhere.
still no luck.Options tried today.
1. Tried ned "install host" a core 2 duo macbookpro (thought it might help to shift to same cpu architecture as in the ex485).
2. Tried new boot harddisk.
No luck. I am starting to suspect the USB boot, or speed stepping BIOS settings. But without one of those legendary KVM cables, I can't confirm it.
Is there a way I can change the BIOS settings without the cable? Maybe flash it via a USB stick that auto runs the flash or something like that? Anyone have experience in that direction? I don't think I can get hold of a KVM cable, since I live in Denmark, and can't seem to find the cables anywhere.
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Hi - nope, I didn't do anything different from what's suggested in this thread and the upgrade thread.
I gladly accepted the performance trade-off inherent in the E5200 CPU upgrade as a small price to pay to not have to try to work out BIOS issues on a headless computer. I just need the CPU to be fast enough to keep things moving, I'm not using it to render video or anything substantial.
I'm really using this as a NAS, but wanted/needed a NAS that was HFS+ format, and spoke AFP natively, since I've just had my fill of screwing around with NAS boxes that claim to work well with Macs, but don't really.
I've so far got roughly 3TB on the box, done in one 1TB and one 2TB block transfers (highlight everything on an almost full 2TB drive, drag and drop to the new 6GB concatenated disk set on the HP)... Rock steady performance, not a single hitch.
By contrast, trying to copy to this same box running WHS was a nightmare. Slow, and the copy would often err out halfway through, leaving things in an unclear state on the destination disk, and forcing a restart on a copy that was already taking too many hours.
Notably, the copy rate on the HP today was considerably slower (~65 MB/s) when I pulled the data from the 2TB Firewire 800 external disk than the previous one when the source was the internal SATA 1TB drive (90-100 MB/s). That't right on the real-world max transfer rate of Firewire800 and Gigabit Ethernet, respectively. That suggests that everything involved is able to operate at true max speeds. Great news!
WHS never had transfer speeds above 20 MB/s, and 5-10 was far more typical... I worried that it might be the hardware, but I really think now it was WHS itself that was crapping the bed.
I gladly accepted the performance trade-off inherent in the E5200 CPU upgrade as a small price to pay to not have to try to work out BIOS issues on a headless computer. I just need the CPU to be fast enough to keep things moving, I'm not using it to render video or anything substantial.
I'm really using this as a NAS, but wanted/needed a NAS that was HFS+ format, and spoke AFP natively, since I've just had my fill of screwing around with NAS boxes that claim to work well with Macs, but don't really.
I've so far got roughly 3TB on the box, done in one 1TB and one 2TB block transfers (highlight everything on an almost full 2TB drive, drag and drop to the new 6GB concatenated disk set on the HP)... Rock steady performance, not a single hitch.
By contrast, trying to copy to this same box running WHS was a nightmare. Slow, and the copy would often err out halfway through, leaving things in an unclear state on the destination disk, and forcing a restart on a copy that was already taking too many hours.
Notably, the copy rate on the HP today was considerably slower (~65 MB/s) when I pulled the data from the 2TB Firewire 800 external disk than the previous one when the source was the internal SATA 1TB drive (90-100 MB/s). That't right on the real-world max transfer rate of Firewire800 and Gigabit Ethernet, respectively. That suggests that everything involved is able to operate at true max speeds. Great news!
WHS never had transfer speeds above 20 MB/s, and 5-10 was far more typical... I worried that it might be the hardware, but I really think now it was WHS itself that was crapping the bed.
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Frustrating to know that it's so smooth for everyone else But glad on youur behalf.
I finally gave in, and yesterday I contactet the guy in Texas that makes the KVM cables. It's gonna add 100$ to the price of my ex485, but thats just too bad. It's not much use as it is now. Hopefully that can solve my issues. Otherwise it's gonna make a decorative door stopper.
Deanster: Have you changed any BIOS settings in order to get yours to boot Lion?
What was the HW setup of your "installation computer"? I take it that you installed on one computer, and moved the disk to the ex485, since you don't mention KVM cables.
Did you use unibeast, Lion internet recovery, iBoot CD or? Did you installe any bootloader? Or just run easybeast with realtek and then swap disk?
brgds
But glad on youur behalf. I finally gave in, and yesterday I contactet the guy in Texas that makes the KVM cables. It's gonna add 100$ to the price of my ex485, but thats just too bad. It's not much use as it is now. Hopefully that can solve my issues. Otherwise it's gonna make a decorative door stopper.
Deanster: Have you changed any BIOS settings in order to get yours to boot Lion?
What was the HW setup of your "installation computer"? I take it that you installed on one computer, and moved the disk to the ex485, since you don't mention KVM cables.
Did you use unibeast, Lion internet recovery, iBoot CD or? Did you installe any bootloader? Or just run easybeast with realtek and then swap disk?
brgds
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I finally cracked it!!!
Here is how I did it (using all the fine posts in this forum. And the suggestions in this thread. A big THANK YOU to everyone who ever shared their experiences here. They really help new ones like me!).
My setup:
ex490 (found out its not a ex485 which CAN be significant, I will explain why later).
modded with e8400 core 2 duo. I have also confirmed e4500 to work. And a lot of folks have great experiences with e5200. BUT if you are using anything but e5200 make sure you have a ex490 or ex495 as their never BIOS support a wider range of CPU's out of the box. If you have older Intel mediasmart server like ex485 you will probably have to tinker with your BIOS to get for example e8400 to work. This CAN be done, and is well documented in other forums. Google will be your friend here.
Another thing that makes the model very significant is the fact that every model before ex490 comes with a 256mb flash recovery partition. Whereas ex490 and ex495 utilizes a network boot for recovery (factory reset) purposes. This is significant BECAUS its a headless machine, and the ones with flash memory has different boot order options and therefore might need to have that changed before the will boot mac os x.
Mine is ex490 so I don't have that problem, but for a long time I thought that might be the problem, and I didn't want to spend 100 dollars on a KVM cable if I didn't have to. So I sought alternative ways to change the boot options. There are two alternatives to the cable.
1. Make a custum BIOS by extracting the existing and altering it. Its described here:http://www.mediasmarthome.com/artic...or-Removing-the-Smoke-and-Mirrors/?textpage=3
2. attach a USB keyboard and do it "blindfolded" by knowing what keys to press
I found several youtube vids and screenshots. google will be your friend here.
Finally the thing (apart from the guide itself) that cracked the nut in my case:
Apparently I was using hard disks with "advanced disk format" i.e. disks that use 4kB sector instead of the old 512Byte. Mostly disks of larger sizes use this. 2TB and 3TB, but also some smaller.
Anyway, I suspect this to be the reason.
What happened was that the chimera boot loader would not install properly on these when just doing it from multibeast so I used this fine guide to simple dd the boot loader to the disk:
viewtopic.php?t=61081
Thank you VERY much to the author!
Now starts all the fun of configuring the server. But that will be for the coming days.
One thing that irritates me a little is the I can only seem to get 1024x768 resolution when doing screen sharing to it. Anyone have a quick fix to this before I start scanning forums (once again)? I must admit that I have had my share of forum reading for the next couple of days.
Here is how I did it (using all the fine posts in this forum. And the suggestions in this thread. A big THANK YOU to everyone who ever shared their experiences here. They really help new ones like me!).
My setup:
ex490 (found out its not a ex485 which CAN be significant, I will explain why later).
modded with e8400 core 2 duo. I have also confirmed e4500 to work. And a lot of folks have great experiences with e5200. BUT if you are using anything but e5200 make sure you have a ex490 or ex495 as their never BIOS support a wider range of CPU's out of the box. If you have older Intel mediasmart server like ex485 you will probably have to tinker with your BIOS to get for example e8400 to work. This CAN be done, and is well documented in other forums. Google will be your friend here.
Another thing that makes the model very significant is the fact that every model before ex490 comes with a 256mb flash recovery partition. Whereas ex490 and ex495 utilizes a network boot for recovery (factory reset) purposes. This is significant BECAUS its a headless machine, and the ones with flash memory has different boot order options and therefore might need to have that changed before the will boot mac os x.
Mine is ex490 so I don't have that problem, but for a long time I thought that might be the problem, and I didn't want to spend 100 dollars on a KVM cable if I didn't have to. So I sought alternative ways to change the boot options. There are two alternatives to the cable.
1. Make a custum BIOS by extracting the existing and altering it. Its described here:http://www.mediasmarthome.com/artic...or-Removing-the-Smoke-and-Mirrors/?textpage=3
2. attach a USB keyboard and do it "blindfolded" by knowing what keys to press
I found several youtube vids and screenshots. google will be your friend here.
Finally the thing (apart from the guide itself) that cracked the nut in my case:
Apparently I was using hard disks with "advanced disk format" i.e. disks that use 4kB sector instead of the old 512Byte. Mostly disks of larger sizes use this. 2TB and 3TB, but also some smaller.
Anyway, I suspect this to be the reason.
What happened was that the chimera boot loader would not install properly on these when just doing it from multibeast so I used this fine guide to simple dd the boot loader to the disk:
viewtopic.php?t=61081
Thank you VERY much to the author!
Now starts all the fun of configuring the server. But that will be for the coming days.
One thing that irritates me a little is the I can only seem to get 1024x768 resolution when doing screen sharing to it. Anyone have a quick fix to this before I start scanning forums (once again)? I must admit that I have had my share of forum reading for the next couple of days.
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Balrog,
I'm glad to here that you suceeded! Enjoy your new server, mine has been super reliable since I installed osx on it. I'm really considering building one from scratch using the fractal design r2 mini itx case so I can do distributed processing with compressor and a MacBook pro
I'm glad to here that you suceeded! Enjoy your new server, mine has been super reliable since I installed osx on it. I'm really considering building one from scratch using the fractal design r2 mini itx case so I can do distributed processing with compressor and a MacBook pro
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