apple xserve install problem

[roberttran]

Hi,
I am trying to install gentoo on my first gen xserve and I am having some issues. It gets to the screen where I can pick the kernel I want to load with (G4, G4smp, G5, etc). When I do the default, it starts up and it runs into a kernal panic or something when it tries to cp directories from what it seems the cd. It first says that the file or directory doesn't exist for serveral directories then it panics and stops with the message that it will reboot in 180 seconds but it doesn't. I've tried the -safe boot but it says something about an unknown filesystem.

-Robert

[roberttran]

Here are the errors:

losetup: /mnt/live/mnt/cdrom/livecd.gcloop: no such file or directory
mount: mounting /dev/loop/0 on /mnt/live/mnt/live-env failed: no such file or directory
cp:: dev: no such file or directory
cp: home: no such file or directory
cp: root: no such file or directory
cp: tmp: no such file or directory
cp: etc: no such file or directory
chmod: /mnt/live/tmp: no such file or directory
cp: 233: can't cd to ../mnt/live-env/var
cp: cache: no such file or directory
cp: lib: no such file or directory
cp: lock: no such file or directory
cp: log: no such file or directory
cp: run: no such file or directory
cp: spool: no such file or directory
cp: tmp: no such file or directory
/linuxrc: 244: mount: not found
/linuxrc: 245: cannot open dev/console: no such file
Kernal panic: attempted to kill init!


When I do -safe it comes up with "unknown or corrupt filesystem"

[roberttran]

I have tried different live cd's and still the same thing.
Could it be how xserve handles cdroms that the live cd doesnt know about?

-Robert

[deffjammer]

I'm just about ready to try to install Gentoo on the Xserve as well, but I need some additional hardware as well. The Xserve that I have does not have an optical drive so I will have to be booting from an external firewire cdrom, is this correct and/or is this how you are doing it? If this is the case, how will it know to boot from the external cdrom drive? The first access I have to the system is a login screen through rs232, I'm not sure how you get into the Open Firmware.
Anything you can tell me to help get me started would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Derek