TrueNAS Scale on a Mac Pro 1,1?

[dpatterson]

Hello.
I am hoping to install TrueNAS Scale on an old Mac Pro 1,1. Note that this is just for prototyping and evaluation. Once I have TrueNAS figured out I'll buy or build a system for production.

Hardware overview:
Mac Pro 1,1
Dual-core Xeon at 2.66 GHz (2 processors, 4 cores)
4MB L2 cache
16GB RAM

This machine has a 64-bit architecture, but a 32-bit boot system

Is it possible to install TrueNAS Scale on this?

TIA,
D.

 

[NugentS]

Try it?

 

[RetroG]

the specs should be fine, but you will have to use bios/mbr booting. as you have discovered apple's EFI (even more so on the early intel macs) is hilariously broken, and the first models can't even boot 64-bit at all without doing so via mbr.

issues you are probably also going to run into...

Intel Macs really struggle to boot off USB with MBR, and your optical drive is likely to be non-functional (due to apple's open bezel design, dust will destroy it). you are probably going to need to use a spare optical drive to do the install.

when booting MBR, non-apple keyboards will typically not work on the GRUB menu.

when booting via MBR you will see "Windows" in the boot picker. you *shouldn't* get the question mark folder icon (indicating a boot device is not set) if you only have one boot choice.

 

[garm]

I never managed to get it working with Core due to the 32 bit bootloader, and the thing idles at like 200W.. ran ubuntu and ZFS just fine for a while until I got fed up and sold it