Need Help Booting Xserve 3,1

[123sean]

Hello everyone, first time poster here,

I have an issue with my Apple Xserve 3,1 that I would like some help with. I was tasked to take the computer and turn it into a linux machine, but it wouldn't boot into a different disk using the option key on bootup, so after digging around, I accidentally installed rEFIt instead of rEFInd on the machine and now it only boots up onto a blank screen with rEFIt on the center. I need to know what exactly I can do to fix this, as holding the option button on boot only gives a blank screen and I cannot figure out how to fix it because I haven't worked on Apple Systems before.

Any tips and help would be appreciated.

 

[123sean]

Okay, since I figured out the problem on my own, I'm going to leave the answer to my problem here.

If the boot menu is displaying a blank screen, there's not much to be done about that, except it is possible to boot external mediums with a different key on boot. When holding the "C" key on boot, it'll instead boot an external DVD/CD/USB drive and boot that drive straight away, allowing one to circumvent any notion of a boot screen.

Another thing: If one is creating a thumb drive for booting with a tool such as rufus, make sure that MBR is selected for the file system, and FAT32 is the filesystem on the drive. Also make sure to research the processor inside your system before doing anything crazy. The Xserve 3,1 I have uses a Xeon Quad-core processor, which I thought was a 32 bit processor due to mac os spitting out I386 when typing in the Arch command, but apparently it's a 64 bit processor, so make sure to grab an AMD64 Image to install on the USB drive in question when working on the Xserve 3,1.

I'm not sure if MBR or FAT32 really matters for mac systems, as I have little experience, but this was what allowed me to boot into Debian to install on the Xserve.