Nekochan Net

Dug up my old O2 from the storage and fixed the hardware which now works nicely... Unfortunately the last time I used it I accidentally misplaced my last working IRIX install drive so the box won't boot (which is why I put it in storage in the first place).

So, yesterday I set it up and tried installing IRIX. God damn it's a complicated and bug-prone install... I'm pretty n00b when it comes to installing IRIX which is why I'm kinda lost here.

Anyway, here's what I've got:

• 200MHz R5k O2
• Full install set, version 6.5.7
• Bootable 6.5.11 overlays + apps
• Non-bootable CDROMs of 6.5.28 + apps
• A DVD copy of 6.5.29 tars

Here's what I did and where it went wrong:

• Installed IRIX with 6.5.11 install tools, Foundation 1&2, 6.5.11 apps and NFS using the feature stream. Everything looks ok but Netscape coredumps...
• Installed patch 5086 - works ok
• Fed disks 1, 2, 3 and apps of 6.5.28 to swmgr and let it update the system
• Rebooted
• Most of my icons are gone, CDrom on the desktop doesn't work, everything looks messed up. But hey, at least Netscape works...

So, what did I do wrong - why did installing overlays broke the whole system? What's the correct way to install overlays anyway? Are my 6.5.28 disks borked? Is the moon really made out of cheese?

I'll try with 6.5.29 today - couldn't do it yesterday because my O2 Toshiba DVD drive refused to read my 6.5.29 DVD and last week I replaced the DVD drive of my Stinkpad x301 with an extra battery (so I had no computer which could have read the disc).

I remember a problem like that I had long time ago. Just it was a bad network configuration. I think it was the order of the address resolution that must be files - dns - nis. Just try to run the network wizard and reboot.

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Alberto

http://www.f3b.es
http://unixverse.blogspot.com

(pretty soon I'm going to replace IRIX with Debian if this doesn't start working... )

OK, did about the twelth install with 6.5.7, install went ok. Fixed networking, DNS was pretty complicated to get up and running but adding a "domain" to resolv.conf fixed that. Even got Netscape up and running once (but only once - then it started segfaulting again).

Did an upgrade to 6.5.29 over NFS - network installs rock so much I think I'll install IRIX over the network completely the next time I need to do that. Which is probably going to be in a couple of hours...

Looks much better now. I'm only missing a couple of icons in Icon Catalog, and the CDROM icon on the desktop complains about an unknown device. Removable Media Manager looks ok and sees the CDROM drive as it should and actual CDs get mounted automatically just fine. It's just the icon on the desktop that's not working properly (and is now missing because I removed it).

Would I get better results by installing 6.5.29 directly over the network? My copy ain't bootable so I'd need to cook up a network install server (no biggie).

A question: Is it possible to ever get IRIX properly up and running from scratch? No wonder nobody ever reinstalls IRIX...

Yes, just finished an install a couple of days ago from CD media following this guide:
http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/6.5inst.html

worked like a charm. Most importantly do this:

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x2 WIP x2

Been staring at that exact quide for a few days now.... And like I said above, the install (6.5.7) works but upgrading with overlays borkes the system.

These are the problems I've got right now:

* missing icons in Icon Catalog (as in some programs like netscape have no icon at all)
* teh CDROM icon on the desktop is not there, and when it was it didn't do anything

Could you use the CDROM device via the command line at all when this happened? If not, perhaps you have a hardware issue.

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x2 WIP x2

Admittedly a from-scratch Irix install is obtuse, but I've never found it to be unreliable. I have 6.5.13 disks, which I use for the initial install. I use the following disks:

6.5.13 Overlay 1,2,3
Foundation 1,2
Applications
Development Foundation
Development Libraries
NFS

After scanning all the disks, there are a couple of java related conflicts, which I fix. During install, there is an error on the xinet appletalk stuff, but I just continue and everything works fine. I don't know if my disk is bad or if SGI screwed up the package.

Once that is done and the machine boots up for the first time, I go into ezsetup and do all that stuff, including creating an account for me. Then I log in as me, finish the network setup (dns/gateway), move the root home folder, then via the network, I install patch 5086, then my destination version whether it be 6.5.30f or 6.5.22m via either an NFS share or (now that I have it setup) and DINA server.

After the next reboot, I install some core neko packages (bash, gnu tar, zip/unzip, and a few others.) and complete personalization setup.

The only time I have had problems with this process is when I forgot a disk (try installing without the applications disk!) of I had hardware issues. So in your case I would suspect that something is wierd with your hardware.

Geof

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--
+MacPro +Sun Ultra 40 +G4 MDD +G4 Cube +G3 B&W +MacBook Air +iPad +Amiga 3000 +Amiga 2000 Toaster

I get the same thing with my 6.5.13 disks, I just remove appletalk if I can remember, but continuing after the error seems to work fine.

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x2 WIP x2

Yes, the CDROM works nicely when used from the command line. As in hinv shows it's there, and when I insert any CD into it it gets automatically mounted under /CDROM.

After clean IRIX install the icon was there and worked, overlay upgrade broke it (complained something about a device) and after that I tried removing the icon hoping it would get recreated after login. It didn't...

That's what I did too, and that's what always breaks my system... The initial install goes nicely now that I know the drill...



I have a slightly weird hardware setup - an overclocked CPU (180->200MHz R5k) and an SATA disk in an ACARD SCA adapter (yes, an internal SATA disk). But both are reversible to defaults and I even have an extra O2 in storage which I could try as well. Hell, I even have an 600MHz CPU on the shelf - I had to swap in the 200MHz one to do the install since 6.5.7 doesn't work with PM7k CPU.

Maybe I'll try with a real SCSI disk next.

EDIT: Oh, the CDROM drive isn't standard either - it's a Toshiba SD-M1401 DVD drive stolen from an old Sun server.

Swapped in a real 18GB SCSI/SCA disk and reinstalled - so far so good. But Netscape still segfaults with 6.5.11.

Too late today to try 6.5.29... I'll try that tomorrow, and I'll fetch the other O2 too so I can swap rest of the parts. I have a hunch it's not a hardware problem, but at least that's easy to test.

hey kim

i must have seen every caprice of the blue crybaby but here's a few things i certainly still remember:

-SD-M1401 is certainly ok. you gave me one way back, it's been in my o2 ever since. must have done a zillion* installations off of it

-the cd set you mention, used to work for you too back then, yes?

-i've had nothing but headaches when upgrading/changing motherboards<->cpus till i wrote a note on the wall "check the PROM version FIRST"



* (back when i joined) i remember reading here how hard a fresh irix installation is. almost gave me a comma cause i've been using macs all my life. funny enough, ian's notes and a basic cd set had the o2 (and later the fuel) up + running in 20 minutes (way faster in fuel). i could never customize irix's installation process the way i can customize mac os installation process, but it wasn't hard. or it was just my lucky brake when dealing with the crybaby.

Yep, mine came from the same batch. I actually had one that had a mechanical problem, but since I had several in storage I trashed the rattling one and replaced it with another. Works nicely now.



Yep. My full set is all original SGI pressed CD's, and the extra overlays came from you . And yes, they did work fine before with my Fuel (which I no longer have).



Good thing you said that - my other O2's PROM is probably way old...

Upgraded to 6.5.29f with that real SCSI/SCA disk inside and it all worked nicely. So even though the ACARD SCSI-SATA bridge seemed to work ok it really didn't.

Oh well.

Thanks to everybody who helped.

EDIT: Well... Launching Mozilla (whatever version came with .29) crashed my whole X (but not the kernel). Turns out that "beziers this big not yet supported" .