[H-GEN] Re: Installing Irix 6.5 over a network

[James Lever]

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(moved to general)

Hi Andrew,

To do this you need to have a directory somewhere on your linux system
and have tftp and rsh/rexec open to the ipaddress of the sgi client you
are installing.

In the accessible tftp directory, you need the following files obtained
from the installation media or the overlay media: (you only require the
kernel (unix.IP??) and disk images (ide.IP??) for the hardware you are 
using)

(ie: /usr/etc/boot)
total 18852
drwxr-xr-x    2 jamver   visacuse     4096 Jun 27 10:17 miniroot
-rw-r--r--    1 jamver   visacuse 19297280 Jun 27 10:17 sa
drwxr-xr-x    2 jamver   visacuse      141 Jun 27 10:18 stand

miniroot:
total 91952
-rwxr-xr-x    1 jamver   visacuse  6746108 Jun 27 10:17 unix.IP20

stand:
total 8628
-rwxr-xr-x    1 jamver   visacuse   514664 Jun 27 10:18 fx.64
-rwxr-xr-x    1 jamver   visacuse   274576 Jun 27 10:18 fx.ARCS
-rwxr-xr-x    1 jamver   visacuse   987332 Jun 27 10:18 ide.IP20

You go to the install or recovery mode options as appropriate after
hitting escape from the sgi boot menu and give it the name or ip
address of the linux server you wish to boot from and the path 
to the base directory of the boot image data.

Now, to get the images, you need an account to login to using rsh/rexec
and either the CDROMs mounted somewhere on the host or the data from
the CDROMs copied to your local disk (preferred) from which to perform
the install.

You then need to issue a bunch of commands such as the following to
open the installation media (each directory or CDROM as appropriate)
and then install the base software.  

open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/6.5/dist
open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/6.5.16-disk1/dist
open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/6.5.16-disk2/dist
open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/6.5.16-disk3/dist
open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/6.5.16-disk4/dist
open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/6.5dev/dist
open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/ONCNFS3-6.2-through-6.5/dist

open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/6.5apps_May2002
open guest at my.linux.ip.address:/home/guest/IRIX/dist/Freeware_05-02

Due to the usual issues to do with security and the like, I would
very strongly recommend getting the latest overlays for 6.5 (being 
6.5.16) and update the system straight away.

You are likely to also need to change a few prom settings like ip 
address and so forth so that you can contact your linux host.

What are the issues with the prom failing to do so?  Check your 
variables network.  You may need to have bootp running and serve
the ip address to the client.  DHCP is an option, but an old 
system like that may not support it.

Have a look at the nvram command from within IRIX5.3 (if it exists)
or else, check the PROM mode environment for possible variables that
need changing.

netaddr=192.168.1.1
netmask=255.255.255.0

for instance.

cheers,
James

According to Andrew Meaden (on Mon, Jul 08, 2002 at 10:58:09AM +1000):
> I was wondering if anyone had any experience in installing Irix 6.5 over a network. There are numerous howtos and instructions floating around on the internet, but those that I've tried don't appear to work, from within Irix 5.3 I'm able to use tftpd to grab the boot images, however the PROM is unable to do so. The machine itself is an IP20 (Iris Indigo R4000 w/R4010 FPU running at 100Mhz)

> I'm not sure if Irix 6.5 is the way to go, but that's the only one I have a license and installation media for... In any case, I need a way to install the OS onto it. I have no external SCSI cdrom for the machine ... so ... it's network from a linux box or nothing at all it would seem.


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