Hi there, I’ve recently upgraded my mac and I have an old mac pro 2009 (specs will be below) I’m trying to convert it in to a home server for media, backup and steam library. I’ve tried plenty of solutions, but still came up short, I was wondering if you guys have any advice. being my first time and an old machine I’m trying to do everything for free.
HARDWARE:
- 2x2.26GHz xeon e5520 Cpus
- 64GB DDR3 ECC RAM
- RX480 8GB (this is a non EFI card, so boot is not displayed)
- SSD on a pcie adapter (this will be for the TrueNas OS)
- 3x 1tb HDD
ACTION TAKEN:
- I’ve created a bootable USB with TrueNas Scale 25.04.0, first time around using Balena Hetcher and second time around using MacOS terminal
- I couldn’t get any sort of boot/bios from my mac, I’ve tried all sort of key combos NVRAM Reset, C (to force usb Boot), Shift (to force safe boot mode), Cmd R (recovery mode), Opt (to go into bios, none of this woked
- I then proceeded to install the SSD on my Windows machine and removed the allocation containing the MacOs, I’ve also tried formatting it, but it wasn’t possible, there’s also the EFI container left on it that I wasn’t able to (EFI partition has now been removed with diskpart on Windows), all this was in the hope that, once removed the HDDs the system would be forced to boot the USB drive and install onto the SSD, needless to say, I was mistaken.
Quick note: all the installing on Mac was done blind as I do not have an EFI GPU
- I then proceed to try and install TrueNas on the SSD via my Windows machine (regular home build) and ran in to the error of not locating the kernel.
after this I’ve realised I’ve spent about 4Hrs and the day was over, so left it at there for now
NEXT STEPS
- I plan on installing TrueNas straight on the SSD through my windows machine, either figuring out the kernel issue or just using a VM
- after I plan on putting that SSD in to my mac and hopefully it will just work.
I know the “next steps” section sounds like a desperate man throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, but that’s where I’m at with my knowledge.
thanks for the patience and help
Hi, I suggest you try getting some directions from the debian wiki: InstallingDebianOn/Apple - Debian Wiki (scroll down to the Mac Pro section).
The MacPro of 2009 is uncovered, but in the general Mac Pro section they mention some preliminary operations like installing refIT as “EFI boot menu”, which you don’t mention and perhaps would help.
I don’t have the hardware hence I cannot provide further insights/advice.
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Macs do not boot off a BIOS, so you’ll need a bootloader.
But, honestly, a 2009 Mac Pro is too old to be of any use—except perhaps as a room heater.
The Mac Pro 2009 specs don’t look that bad to me. For it’s time it was a powerhouse of a workstation. The CPU should easily be adequate for TrueNAS though power consumption will be pretty expensive (especially if you need to pay for aircon aircon to dissipate the heat that you have already paid to create and then paid again to blow around the room). The areas of performance constraint seem to me to be that it only supports SATA II at 300Mb/s and not SATA III at 600MB/s, and possibly only PCIe Gen 2 bus speeds.
As for install, I am NOT a Mac user (since c. 1991) but I am sure that @gdaniele has pointed you in the right direction - but the installation instructions for rEFIt suggest that you might need a MacOS to install the package on your SSD.
My advice would therefore be to:
1, Read the rEFIt documentation carefully to understand what it does, how it works, how to install it on a separate SSD and how to use it with a separate O/S.
2, Using an (Intel??) Mac, install rEFIt on the SSD as active partition.
3, Put it in the Mac Pro and see if it enables the graphics port and allows you to boot and see the TrueNAS installer.
3a, If it does enable graphics, great.
3b, If it doesn’t research how to make graphics work. I think you will create a LOT of heartache for yourself (both now and if problems arise in the future) trying to install TrueNAS and diagnose any problems without hardware console graphics.
I pulled out an old… I mean ancient … core 2 quad q6600 circa what 2007 board with 8gig ram to test bench scale…
runs fine and pretty performant given its age… keeping in mind just running zfs and NAS functions no apps or containers …
however… same issue … could not use a SCALE iso to install …
you have to use a CORE installer, cant remember if I had to go back or if I could use latest… pretty sure I found something on the net about it.
anyway … install core… then upgrade trains to SCALE … and bob is your uncle… works fine from there… and updates fine as well
